Bougainville Strait is one of three major routes for merchant shipping through the Solomon Islands; the routes are the Bougainville Strait and Indispensable Strait which link the Pacific Ocean, Solomon Sea and Coral Sea; and the Manning Strait that links the Pacific to New Georgia Sound, which is also known as ‘The Slot’, through which Japanese naval ships resupplied the garrison on Guadalcanal during the Pacific War. Bougainville Strait Bougainville Strait separates Choiseul Island, part of the Solomon Islands from Bougainville Island, the next to the northward and part of Papua New Guinea. It was first passed through in 1768 by Louis
Choiseul Island under both protectorates, converting most of the population to Christianity. In the early 20th century several British and Australian firms began large-scale coconut planting. Choiseul was visited by Austrian anthropologist and photographer Hugo Bernatzik in 1932. Bernatzik documented some of the few remaining ancestral customs of the island people which are included in an ethnography that he published a few years later. He also took some photographs of the islanders and brought back a stone urn with carvings, reflecting a culture that he deemed was dying in contact with the modern world. During World War II, the Choiseul was occupied