Not to be outdone by the tremblors rumbling around the South Island, the North Island too has experienced a number of sizable earthquakes in recent days. Most noticably a 5.4 that rocked Gisborne and Tokomaru Bay on Friday 25 March and a magnitude 4.5 that hit 70 km NE of Whakatane just after 5am this morning.

Today (see above map) at 3.28pm a deep 5.0 magnitude quake occured 70Km north of White Island. It follows an earlier shallow 4.1 quake near Mount Cook in the South Island.

White Island is the location of  one of New Zealand’s active volcanoes which has been at alert level 1 for some time. It is situated off the coast of Whakatane and Tauranga

Data from Geonet:

Reference Number: 3486692
NZDT: Mon, Mar 28 2011 3:28 pm
Magnitude: 5.0
Depth: 270 km
Details: 70 km north of White Island

Want to know more about Volcanoes in New Zeland?

The Global Volcanism Program is a good place to start