The type specimen of Kenyon's Cormorant was collected on February 22, 1959 by Karl W. Kenyon from a fish net, with a paratype, originally identified as Phalacrocorax pelagicus, collected at the same locality two years earlier, on September 15, 1957.

The species was described as Stictocarbo kenyoni, and named Kenyon's Shag.

The validity of this taxon has been questioned by Rohwer, Filardi, Bostwick and Peterson in their "A critical evaluation of Kenyon's Shag (Phalacrocorax [stictocarbo] kenyoni)."  Auk 117, 2 (2000), 308-320.

They morphometrically evaluated 224 skeletal specimens of North Pacific cormorants, as well as qualitative characters originally used to characterize P. kenyoni. Using 14 skeletal
characters they failed to find support for the validity of the species. Moreover, all seven unique character states that were described for P. kenyoni were found as well in P. pelagicus and P. urile.

Kenyon's Cormorant †     Phalacrocorax kenyoni
USA, Alaska: far western Aleutian Islands
insert after: Phalacrocorax urile
Douglas Siegel-Causey,
Systematics and biogeography of north Pacific shags, with a description of a new species
Occasional papers of the Museum of Natural History (Lawrence, Kansas: The University of Kansas) 140 (1991): 1-17