A tsunami warning has been issued for Papua New Guinea following a strong 6.9 magnitude earthquake.
The quake was shallow, striking the Pacific island nation at a depth of six miles on Saturday morning local time, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).
It struck at 6.04 am local time (8.04pm GMT) and was centred offshore, 120 miles east of the town of Kimbe on the island of New Britain.
The USGS issued a tsunami warning for waves of one to three metres along some parts of the Papua New Guinea coastline after the quake.
A caution about smaller waves of 0.3m was issued for the nearby Solomon Islands.
There were no immediate reports of damage. Just over 500,000 people live on the island of New Britain.
Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said there was no tsunami threat to the country, which is Papua New Guinea's closest neighbour. No warning was issued for New Zealand.
Marolyn Simbiken, a receptionist at Kimbe's Liamo Reef Resort, said so far she had not seen any damage.
'We did feel the earthquake here,' she told AFP.
'But there's not big damage. Nothing was damaged here and there was no evacuation.'
Walindi Plantation Resort worker Barbara Aibilo she felt a 'slight shake'.
Two smaller quakes, with preliminary magnitudes of 5.1 and 5.3, afterwards struck near the same patch of sea, according to the USGS.
Earthquakes are common in Papua New Guinea, which sits on top of the seismic 'Ring of Fire' - an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Although they seldom cause widespread damage in sparsely populated areas, they can trigger destructive landslides.