Being one of just two islands in the Tasman Sea, Lord Howe Island is a haven for breeding seabirds. Fourteen different species breed each year, in numbers of hundreds of thousands.
Lord Howe Island has some notable features about its seabird populations. It is the only breeding location in the world for the Providence petrel (apart from a few pairs recently discovered on the offshore islands of Norfolk Island); the only breeding location in Australia for the Kermadec petrel and Grey ternlet; the most southerly breeding location in the world for the Sooty tern, Common Noddy, Black noddy and Masked booby; probably the world's largest concentration of Red-tailed tropicbirds breeding, and the only breeding population of Flesh-footed shearwaters off Eastern Australia.