D'Entrecasteaux Islands () are situated near the eastern tip of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...

in the

Solomon Sea The Solomon Sea is a sea located within the Pacific Ocean. It lies between Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. Many major battles were fought there during World War II. Extent The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limit ...

Milne Bay Province Milne Bay is a province of Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Alotau. The province covers 14,345 km² of land and 252,990 km² of sea, within the province there are more than 600 islands, about 160 of which are inhabited. The province has ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

. The group spans a distance of , has a total land area of approximately and is separated from the Papua New Guinea mainland by the wide

Ward Hunt Strait The Ward Hunt Strait is a 30 km wide stretch of water in Milne Bay, separating Papua New Guinea from Goodenough Island in the D'Entrecasteaux Islands. The Dart Reefs and Keast Reef are located in the centre of the channel.Goschen Strait in the south. D'Entrecasteaux Islands show signs of

volcanism Volcanism, vulcanism or volcanicity is the phenomenon of eruption of molten rock (magma) onto the surface of the Earth or a solid-surface planet or moon, where lava, pyroclastics, and volcanic gases erupt through a break in the surface called a ...

People

The inhabitants of D'Entrecasteaux Islands are indigenous subsistence

horticulturalists Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

living in small, traditional settlements. People of this area produced and traded clay pots as well as participated in the Kula exchange of shell valuables, travelling widely to other islands on sea-going sailing canoes. During the more recent past, people harvested

copra Copra (from ) is the dried, white flesh of the coconut from which coconut oil is extracted. Traditionally, the coconuts are sun-dried, especially for export, before the oil, also known as copra oil, is pressed out. The oil extracted from co ...

, trochus and pearl-shells and some timber for cash.

Alluvial Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. ...

gold mining was once important and in recent years the area has been subject to

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2 ...

exploration.

Description

The three principal islands, from northwest to southeast, are Goodenough (Nidula), then across Moresby Strait to

Fergusson Fergusson may refer to: Places *County of Fergusson, South Australia, Australia *Fergusson Island, off the coast of New Guinea *Fergusson Glacier, Wilson Hills, Antarctica *Nacimiento-Fergusson Road, the only road across the Santa Lucia Range in t ...

(Moratau), the largest of the three, and across Dawson Strait to Normanby Island (Duau). In addition there are numerous small islands and reefs. Sanaroa and Dobu are the most significant of the smaller islands, while Sori or Wild is named for HMS ''Challengers artist, John James Wild. The highest peak in the group is the

Mount Vineuo Mount Vineuo, also known as Mount Oiautukekea, is a mountain on Goodenough Island, Papua New Guinea. The mountain is above sea level.geothermal fields. Fergusson Island has three volcanic masses over high. There are geothermal areas in the south east area of Goodenough Island and the Bwabwadana and Iamalele on Fergusson Island. A particularly active hot springs is located at Deidei on Fergusson. Between Fergusson and Normanby Islands the Dawson Straits Group has several volcanic centres that may define a partly submerged

caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcano eruption. When large volumes of magma are erupted over a short time, structural support for the rock above the magma chamber is ...

; one of the cones on southwestern Fergusson Island may have erupted in 1350. Geologically the islands are largely made up of rock that probably once belonged to the northern edge of the Australian plate that was thrust deep into the Earth's crust by plate collision. The burial of these rocks to great depths (where they also encountered correspondingly high temperatures) metamorphosed the rocks to

eclogite facies Eclogite () is a metamorphic rock containing garnet (almandine-pyrope) hosted in a matrix of sodium-rich pyroxene (omphacite). Accessory minerals include kyanite, rutile, quartz, lawsonite, coesite, amphibole, phengite, paragonite, zoisite, do ...

: >2GPa and >700˚C. Specifically, these islands play host to the youngest known coesite-eclogite sample; CA- TIMS dating of zircons within this sample dates its formation to ~5Ma, meaning it has been exhumed from a depth of ~100 km at the remarkable rate of ~20mm/yr. The rock at the centre of the tall domes in these islands was thus recently very deep in the Earth. Over a very short time, geologically speaking, these packets of rocks have ascended through the Earth's shallow mantle and pushed through the crust to form the gneiss domes we find today – the vestiges of the crust these massifs have thrust through are still draped as carapaces over the edges of the domes. These islands are thought to be geophysically significant because they lie immediately ahead of the west-most rift tip of the Woodlark spreading centre, which has been propagating westwards into the continent. The D'Entrecasteaux thus represent a stage of continental breakup just preceding fully-fledged volcanic spreading.

History

The group was named for the French navigator Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, who, in his ship the '' Espérance'', passed through the area in 1792 while searching for his missing compatriot, Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse. Almost a century later, in 1874, Captain

John Moresby Rear Admiral John Moresby (15 March 1830 – 12 July 1922) was a British naval officer who explored the coast of New Guinea and was the first European to discover the site of Port Moresby. Life and career Moresby was born in Allerford, Somerset ...

of made a running survey of the west coast of the islands and became the first European to make landfall. D. Jenness M.A. (Oxon) and Rev. A. Ballantyne. (1920) ''The Northern D'Entrecasteaux'', Oxford University Press. In 1891, the Methodist Church of Australia established a mission station on

Dobu Island Dobu Island is an island, part of D'Entrecasteaux Islands in Papua New Guinea. It is located south of Fergusson Island and north of Normanby Island. It is currently administered by Dobu Rural LLG. The people of Dobu were the subject of a sem ...

. There, natives were recruited to work in gold mines and on copra plantations. Another mission was established in 1898 at Bwaidoga, Mud Bay, on the south coast of Goodenough Island. The island group became a focus of activity in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

when Imperial Japanese troops were marooned on Goodenough Island briefly in 1942, before being attacked by the

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

n 2/12th Battalion. In 1943 RAAF mobile works squadrons constructed an airfield with a airstrip and other facilities at Vivigani Airfield on the site of a smaller, pre-war airstrip that existed at that location. It was used by allied forces from June 1943 to August 1944 as a staging point for operations in New Guinea and nearby occupied islands. Vivigani airstrip has been open to commercial service since 1963. A US Navy PT-Boat base was established on Fergusson Island in June 1942.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:D'Entrecasteaux Islands Archipelagoes of Papua New Guinea Islands of Milne Bay Province Volcanoes of Papua New Guinea