M5.3 Earthquake near South Sandwich Islands region — 12 February 2025

Moderate earthquakes can damage poorly built or unreinforced structures near the epicentre, while well-engineered buildings typically escape serious harm. Shaking is often strong enough to wake sleeping residents over a wide area.

A magnitude 5.3 earthquake radiates roughly 1,344 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 432, which is below the USGS threshold of more than 600 for its significant-earthquake list. The ranking combines magnitude with available Did You Feel It responses and PAGER alert level; it is not a direct measurement of damage.

That is about 18:05 local solar time at the epicentre, in the evening.

The epicentre was located at -56.3101, -27.1954. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 5.1 earthquake 20 km southeast of here on 30 August 2026.

At 108 km this was an intermediate-depth earthquake. Energy from events at this depth spreads out before it reaches the surface, which usually means weaker shaking near the epicentre than a shallow quake of the same magnitude, but shaking felt across a wider area.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size can be felt widely and may cause minor local damage. Its intermediate depth normally reduces peak shaking near the epicentre compared with a shallow event of the same magnitude.

The USGS record does not carry a link to NOAA tsunami information. That field is not an all-clear and does not state whether a tsunami occurred. In this case, a damaging tsunami would be less likely because at M5.3 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; its 108 km focal depth is too great to deform the sea floor significantly. For an active coastal alert, use tsunami.gov or your local warning authority.

No further earthquakes have been recorded within about 150 km of the epicentre in the seven days after this event.

93 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 6.4 event near South Sandwich Islands region on 11 July 2026. This M5.3 event released about 45 times less energy than that event.

3 earthquakes have been recorded within 100 km of this epicentre in the past year, 0 of them in the past 30 days.

This earthquake is part of the February 2025 worldwide record. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.