Tremors continued to shake Malta on Saturday, continuing a weeks-long streak of seismic activity that seismologists have insisted is of little concern.

The most recent shake was felt locally at 7.04am on Saturday morning and stemmed from the same epicentre around 130km south of Malta as the recent spate of earthquakes. It was recorded as a magnitude 4.9 shake by the University of Malta’s Seismic Monitoring and Research Group.

People in Sliema, St Julian’s, Żebbuġ and Naxxar were among those who reported being shaken by the Saturday morning tremor.

There have been dozens of similar tremors felt across Malta in recent weeks, all stemming from the same undersea epicentre. The most intensely felt one was a magnitude 5.1 event recorded at 7.55pm on Monday, January 30.

According to geophycist Pauline Galea, the period of high seismic activity is not unusual, with fault systems around the Maltese islands alternating such periods of activity with quieter periods.

A similar stretch of activity was recorded just over two years ago, between September and November 2020, when around 100 tremors were recorded in roughly as many days.

While those earthquakes originated from an area closer to the Maltese mainland than the current spate of tremors, they were of a significantly lower magnitude and were not felt as frequently by residents.