Magnitude 5.5 Earthquake Depth 117 km Strikes Rat Islands, Aleutian Islands on 13th December 2025

The islands got their name from rats that were accidentally introduced by a Japanese shipwreck in the 1780s.

A successful, government-funded program eradicated rats from Hawadax Island, leading to the island’s renaming and the restoration of its native birds and ecosystem.

Invasive rats remain a problem on other Aleutian Islands, negatively impacting bird populations and other wildlife.

A magnitude 8.7 earthquake occurred in the Rat Islands in 1965, highlighting the region’s seismic instability.

The Rat Islands form part of the Aleutian Island arc, where the Pacific plate subducts beneath the North American plate, a process that causes these large earthquakes.


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