Qualla: D'Entrecasteaux Islands

D'Entrecasteaux Islands: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sadalmelik, Public domain. Something extraordinary is happening under these islands, and it is happening fast. The gneiss domes that form the cores of Goodenough, Fergusson, and Normanby are made of rock that was buried nearly 100 kilometers below the Earth's surface just five million years ago - rock that should be lost to the mantle, that should be locked down in the deep heat of the planet, and that has instead been rising back toward daylight at a rate of about 20 millimeters a year. Geologists come here to see stones that a continent is currently giving back. And on the surface, above all that tectonic drama, three large islands and a cluster of smaller ones spread across 160 kilometers of the Solomon Sea, home to people whose ancestors learned to read ocean currents before anyone in Europe had learned to read at all.

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Image: Sadalmelik | Public domain

D'Entrecasteaux Islands: Three Islands in the Sea

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Papier K at fr.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 1.0. The archipelago sits just off the eastern tip of New Guinea, separated from the mainland by the 30-kilometer-wide Ward Hunt Strait to the north and the 18-kilometer-wide Goschen Strait to the south. The three large islands line up from northwest to southeast: Goodenough (Nidula) ...

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Image: Papier K at fr.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 1.0

D'Entrecasteaux Islands: Rocks From the Depths

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, Public domain. The technical name for the youngest rocks here is coesite-eclogite. Coesite is a form of silica that only forms under pressures higher than two gigapascals - pressures that exist only deep in the Earth. The eclogite here was cooked at temperatures above 700 degrees Celsius and pr...

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Image: United Kingdom Hydrographic Office | Public domain

D'Entrecasteaux Islands: Canoes and Shell Valuables

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit various, Public domain. The Kula ring is one of the most celebrated exchange systems in anthropology, and the D'Entrecasteaux Islanders have been part of it for as long as anyone can trace. Men built sea-going sailing canoes with careful attention to hull and spirit - the canoes were not just vessels bu...

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Image: various | Public domain

D'Entrecasteaux Islands: The Naming Voyage of 1792

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rémi Bigonneau, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1792, the French navigator Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux sailed these waters aboard his flagship Recherche, searching for the missing expedition of Jean-Francois de Galaup, the Comte de La Perouse, whose ships had vanished in the South Pacific four years earlier. D'Entrecastea...

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Image: Rémi Bigonneau | CC BY-SA 4.0

D'Entrecasteaux Islands: When the War Came and Went

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sadalmelik, Public domain. For a brief time during the Second World War the archipelago sat in the middle of the Pacific campaign. A US Navy PT-boat base opened on Fergusson Island in June 1942. Japanese marines got themselves stranded on Goodenough in August 1942 and were eventually pushed off by Australi...

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Image: Sadalmelik | Public domain