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© USGS
A 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck the Tonga Trench at a depth of 129.4 km (80.4 miles). The earthquake was too deep to generate a tsunami. The epicenter of the undersea quake was 2266 km (1408 miles) NNE of Auckland, New Zealand. The Tonga Trench is a convergent plate boundary in the South Pacific. The trench lies at the northern end of the Kermadec-Tonga Subduction Zone, an active subduction zone where the Pacific Plate is being subducted below the Tonga Plate and the Indo-Australian Plate.

The Tonga Trench extends north-northeast from the Kermadec Islands north of the North Island of New Zealand. The trench turns west north of the Tonga Plate and becomes a transform fault zone. The Tonga Trench is one of the most seismically and volcanically-active regions of the sea-floor on Earth. The planet's crust is being violently devoured at a rate of more than 24 centimeters per year- the fastest of any region on the planet.