Bulweria fallax is a poorly known species of the north-west Indian Ocean, occurring widely offshore in the Arabian Sea and Gulfs of Aden and Oman, where it is often the commonest pelagic seabird (Porter et al. 1996). It occurs commonly east of 58°E in the Arabian Sea as far as the Maldive Ridge, regularly east to southern India and Sri Lanka, and regularly, albeit at low densities, to the eastern Indian Ocean in the Bay of Bengal and off north-western Australia (Van den Berg et al. 1991, Ryan et al. 2013, Lavers et al. 2014). During the summer monsoon (May-September) it congregates off the Socotra archipelago (Yemen), where a breeding colony of at least c.50 pairs was recently discovered (Taleb 2002) and where c.3,000 pairs are now estimated to nest locally on mainland cliffs (Al Saghier et al. unpublished), and also off the Halaaniyaat islands (southern Oman), where it may nest (or on the Arabian mainland adjacent) (Gallagher 1985). In recent years, work in UAE waters of the Gulf of Oman has revealed erratic influxes of up to 600 birds in Sept – Dec; the species is either very rare or absent for much of the rest of the year. Similar sea-cliffs within its range on the coast of Somalia deserve investigation for breeding colonies (PERSGA/GEF 2003). A population of unidentified Bulweria petrels, most likely B. fallax, was discovered around Comoro archipelago (Shirihai et al. 2015), with most birds being in active moult, but not all. These individuals, however, show plumage characteristics that do not match with B. fallax.