Kesoko is the dreaded sea-spirit of the New Georgia Group, held to lurk in the passages and open water of the Roviana and Marovo lagoons. Fishermen and the crews of raiding canoes feared that it would rise beneath a hull, capsize the vessel and drown those aboard, or spoil a catch and ruin a voyage. Kesoko belongs to the malevolent, non-ancestral order of spirits rather than to the venerated tomate of the dead, and sources describe it as broadly marine and impersonal, without fixed genealogy or shrine. Its danger shaped the carving of the nguzunguzu figurehead lashed at the waterline of the tomoko war-canoe, set to bar the spirit from crossing the bow.