Abbott's booby is the only booby restricted to a single location, although its former distribution covered much of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Fossil evidence indicates its former presence in the South Pacific, and eyewitness reports of it formerly breeding on the Mascarene Islands. In April 2007, an individual of this species was photographed at a booby colony on Rota in the Pacific Ocean, and the same individual has been seen off-and-on in the red-footed booby colony there through at least 2011.