Bougainville Coastal Waters

Since 2005, the Pacific Community (SPC ) has assisted Papua New Guinea (PNG) to define its territorial sea baseline as a prerequisite to delimit its maritime zones. The national territorial seas coordinates and the schedule of coordinates for the maritime zones is contained in the PNG Maritime Zones Act 2015 gazetted by the Governor General and came into force on 1st May 2017.

Papua New Guinea is now in a position to map out roadstead, port areas, harbours, rivers, bays, etc., and provincial boundaries for respective maritime provinces; this is the Coastal Waters Project of PNG. The project will commence with the delimitation of Coastal Waters for the Autonomous Region of Bougainville (AROB), and PNG has requested technical assistance from (SPC).