James Keller, THE CANADIAN PRESS

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VANCOUVER - Dave Ross was still in bed Thursday morning when he was awoken by the subtle rumbling of an earthquake off the north coast of Vancouver Island.

Just another earthquake, Ross thought, before he quickly drifted back to sleep.

"Kind of like a shot going off, like when you're blasting, a little bit of rumbling, no noise of course, just a bit of vibration," said Ross from his home in the small community of Holberg on the northern edge of the Island.

"We get a whole bunch of little ones all the time," the retiree in his 60s said.

There was no reported damage and no tsunami warnings after the 5.8-magnitude quake more than 150 kilometres out to sea.

But a recent swarm of offshore earthquakes serves as a reminder that some British Columbians live on unstable ground.

Thursday morning's quake was the strongest of more than 100 recorded in the area since Tuesday, several with magnitudes of around four and five, said Stephane Mazzotti of the Geological Survey of Canada.

Mazzotti said there will likely be more tremors in the coming days, but he cautioned the recent activity isn't a sign "the big one" is near.

"It doesn't have any implication of other earthquakes on land or big ones," Mazzotti said.

"That whole area is where the two oceanic plates are moving, and that drives magmatic activity and you do get swarms of earthquakes like that but there are other faults and features that could be responsible."

Mazzotti said quakes that far off the coast wouldn't typically pose a risk to people living on land until they reached magnitudes of seven or higher.

In fact, many residents in northern B.C. said they didn't feel a thing on Thursday.

Greg Vance, who runs a store in the tiny coastal fishing outport of Winter Harbour, almost directly east of the quake's epicentre, said everyone living along the Island's coast is keenly aware of the area being prone to earthquakes.

"We're in a tsunami zone, there's signs all over our harbour - we're quite aware of it," Vance said.

"When the big one comes, it'll be pretty exciting around here, I think."

There has been renewed attention to offshore quakes in recent years, particularly in the wake of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean, which devastated coastal communities and left more than 200,000 people dead.

The disaster prompted the B.C. government to spend $1 million to upgrade tsunami response programs in 26 towns along the coast of Vancouver Island.

Maiclaire Bolton, a seismologist with B.C.'s Provincial Emergency Program, said the public should be prepared for earthquakes and tsunamis, but she said sometimes people overreact when they hear about quakes in the ocean.

"Because of recent memories of what happened in Asia in 2004, as soon as people hear about there being an earthquake they immediately think of a tsunami," she said.

"Not all types of earthquakes cause tsunamis. It has to be big, and it has to occur with the right type of faulting."

There have been several tsunami warnings or watches issued for parts of B.C. in the past few years.

Most recently, a tsunami watch was issued in January 2007 after an earthquake off the coast of Japan, though no tsunamis were actually reported.

The last time a major tsunami hit Vancouver Island was in 1964, following an earthquake in Alaska.

The quake caused a series of waves to push up the Alberni Inlet, causing millions of dollars in damage in Port Alberni and nearby communities but there were only a few reported injuries and no deaths.

Some buildings were damaged or completely destroyed and others that weren't bolted to their foundations were swept as far as 300 metres inland, according to a provincial government report at the time.