March the 30th, 2021 - Professor Ante Mihanovic has discussed the recent repeated Adriatic sea earthquakes which Croatia has experienced over the last 60 hours or so.

It goes without saying that we in Croatia are sick to the back teeth of experiencing earthquakes or even seeing the word after what happened in Zagreb back in March 2020 and then the devastating situation which struck the Sisak-Moslavina area at the very end of December last year - putting the cherry on top of what was an utterly horrendous year.

Despite our newly developed proverbial allergy to the word earthquake, nobody can deny that these natural movements of the plates of the planet on which we live are both fascinating and terrifying. The Adriatic sea has experienced many quakes over the last couple of days or so (read about them here), and Professor Ante Mihanovic of the University of Split has taken to explaining the situation.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Professor Ante Mihanovic spoke to HRT about the recent quakes and the fact that the soil in Dalmatia is quite active these days, he said that although it might seem unnerving, it isn't something that should worry us at all.

''The collision of the African and Indo-European tectonic plate is passing through the Mediterranean area. Everything that is happening is within the scope of what we already know, the Adriatic part itself isn't so seismically endangered and the data shows that there are essentially no strong earthquakes occuring, except in two locations, the Palagruza zone and the Jabuka zone,'' explained Professor Ante Mihanovic from the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the University of Split.

He added that the earthquake as it happened on March the 27th, 2021, which was 5.5 on the Richter scale and 10 kilometers from the epicentre, was a rare sort of earthquake, so rare that quakes of that type only occur once in 500 years.

''As far as the return period is concerned, it's unlikely that a stronger earthquake will occur here. Its effect is minor for us, only Palagruza was shaken so there is no special damage, except for the situation playing on our fears,'' assured Professor Ante Mihanovic.

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