A earthquake measuring 5.3 struck off the north end of Vancouver Island Saturday afternoon.
The temblor was recorded at 2:22 p.m., at a depth of 10 kilometres west of Port McNeill.
“A [magnitude-5] in this offshore area is fairly common,” said John Cassidy, a Natural Resources Canada earthquake seismologist and University of Victoria professor.
Fifty-seven quakes of magnitude-5 to -6 have been recorded within 100 kilometres of Saturday’s epicentre in the past 30 years, Cassidy said, along with seven larger than magnitude-6.
“So a couple each year,” he said.
Earthquakes such as this one serve as a reminder “of those active tectonic plates off our coast” and beneath our feet, he said.
“They move at about the same speed that our fingernails grow,” he said, “but over a lifetime, it is quite a distance — several metres.”
