Wartime History
During 1943-1944, this island was used to shelter and hide Japanese barges. A docking area and facilities were built on the island by the Japanese.

Today
Around 1980, a marine research center known as the The Laing Island Station was established on Laing Island funded by Belgium that operated for approximately 20 years until abandoned sometime after 2000.

Yves Roisin, Université Libre de Bruxelles adds:
"The Laing Island station closed some 20 years ago, but I stayed there for rather long periods in the 1980s. I spent altogether more than 36 months there between 1983 and 1994, and although I am an entomologist, I did quite a lot of diving (~170 dives ?) all around Laing Island, in Hansa Bay and on neighboring reefs. I know that the researchers who founded the station in the 1970s, and who are now either dead or very old, did some prospection to find wrecks and other diving sites all around the bay. They also explored sites known by local people as 'good fishing spots', which usually meant a reef or a wreck not visible from the surface. B-24. There were several ship wrecks, but the only plane wreck we knew of was an Airacobra fighter lying at a depth of some 29m (95') in the bay. I dived on it once, back in 1988. Now, apart from Hansa Bay itself, which is no more than 40-45m deep, as soon as you sail E or NE from the coast toward Manam Island the bottom goes rather steeply down to more than 1000m. Of course I have no idea of what may lie on the bottom below 45m."

Contribute Information
Do you have photos or additional information to add?

Last Updated
October 23, 2019