A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hits the Auckland Islands, New Zealand

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A representative image of the Richter scale can be seen in this image. – Reuters/File

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck New Zealand’s Auckland Islands at 2.21pm Wednesday, according to the US Geological Survey, however, there were no reports of damage.

New Zealand monitoring agency GeoNet said the epicenter was 33 kilometers below the surface, with no immediate tsunami warnings.

A city council official from Invercargill – the nearest big city – said there were no reports of an earthquake being felt there or damage to infrastructure.

Earlier in May, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck southeast of New Caledonia’s Loyalty Islands, triggering a tsunami warning.

The earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of Fiji, eastern Australia and northern New Zealand.

Last month, the US Geological Survey reported that a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck the Kermadec Islands region near the country.

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the trench – the Puysegur Trench, a plate boundary where the Australian plate sinks beneath the Pacific Plate – itself in November 2004.

A month before the 7.2 aftershocks, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake near the trench caused shaking to be felt as far as Tasmania.

GeoNet seismologist Dr. Jonathan Hanson said we can be reasonably confident that Wednesday’s quake was related to subduction zone processes in the region.

“The fact that we’re seeing a lot of events happen in a really similar area reinforces that it’s likely related to some of the processes going on there.”

According to the New Zealand Herald, in the past 20 years, scientists have identified about 100 events in the region.

“The actual amount is likely to be much higher than that, but since we’re so far away from our instruments, it’s hard to get a full sense of how active the seismic activity is there — other than we need an event above magnitude five, to be relatively confident in it.”

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