Dobu Island (called Goulvain Island on early maps and also known as Watoa Island), is an extinct volcano, part of D’Entrecasteaux Islands in Papua New Guinea (PNG). It is located in Dawson Strait, south of Fergusson Island and north of Normanby Island. It is currently administered by Dobu Rural LLG. The people speak the Dobu language, which is shared with the neighbouring islands in the D’Entrecasteaux group. The island has a long history of trading with nearby islands and with the Trobriand Islands to the north and Milne Bay to the south as part of the kula ring ceremonial exchange system. First contact with Europeans was established in the mid-nineteenth with visits by whalers and pearlers, and later, in 1884, by blackbirders who forcibly recruited some men and killed those who resisted. They were followed by copra traders and in 1891 by missionaries.