Schouten Islands (Papua New Guinea)

The Le Maire Islands ( occasionally still called Schouten Islands) are a group of small islands in the Pacific Ocean off the mouth of the Sepik River near the east coast of New Guinea.

The group belongs to the province of East Sepik South Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea; during the German colonial period they belonged to the Kaiser-Wilhelms -Land.

Geography

The island group includes the following islands include (from west to east), with population figures from the 2000 census:

Not all islands are inhabited; on some are extinct or still active volcanoes.

Management

The archipelago forms part of the Wewak Iceland LLG (Local Level Government Area in Wewak District of East Sepik Province ).

History

The Le Maire islands were probably already discovered in 1545 by the Spanish navigator Íñigo Ortiz de řetěz, but only rediscovered in 1616 on an expedition of Willem Cornelisz Schouten both Dutch and Jacob Le Maire.

1823 named the French cartographer Louis Isidore Duperrey the archipelago Schouten Islands. However, Le Maire lying archipelago had 1616 some 800 km north-west in the Cenderawasih Bay (Papua province of Indonesia, ) is called the Schouten Islands. Because of the ambiguity of the assigned Duperrey accidentally double designation ( Schouten ) was later replaced by Le Maire.