The quake struck at a moderate depth of 30 kilometres with the epicentre just off the northern tip of Vanuatu's sparsely-populated Ambrym island.
The quake struck at a moderate depth of 30 kilometres with the epicentre just off the northern tip of Vanuatu's sparsely-populated Ambrym island.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said there was no tsunami risk.
"Shaking would have been felt throughout the whole of Vanuatu," Geoscience Australia senior seismologist Eddie Leask told AFP.
"But it's hard to tell whether it will cause damage. It's reasonably shallow but it all depends on the buildings, soil type and so on."
On its website, Geoscience put the potential damage radius at 63 kilometres.
Comment: According to USGS, there have been 17 previous earthquakes with magnitude of over 6 in the region, though large earthquakes are rare. Tuesday's quake was the largest within 155 miles (250 kilometers) of this location in over a century. See our Earthquakes topic section for more recent increased seismic activity.
Now for the big question: is it 'just a coincidence' that this quake strikes Venezuela, and not far from Caracas, at this time? Socio-political upheaval mirrored in planetary upheaval?
Or could there have been some measure of 'direction' (as we suspect happened with the Haiti earthquake in 2010)?
At the very moment this one struck, Venezuela's leaders were celebrating a "revolutionary" new economic plan they hope will rescue Venezuela's stricken economy: Here it is here; around the 2-min mark: