Samoa was shaken by another earthquake early Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after a 6.9 magnitude tremor shook the island nation.

The Samoa Meteorological Service reported in a post on its official Facebook page that the earthquake on Tuesday morning occured at around 5.19am and had a magnitude of 5.50 on the richter scale.

It was located in the Samoa region, had a depth of 10.00 km and was recorded 198.41 km south-west of the Samoan capital Apia.

According to the Meteorological Service, no tsunami threat was issued for Samoa following the earthquake.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in a summary of the earthquake on Tuesday morning, said it struck at 16:19:23 (UTC) 109 km northeast of Hihifo, Tonga.

In its tectonic summary of the seismicity of the neighbouring area, the USGS said "the eastern margin of the Australia plate is one of the most seismically active areas of the world due to high rates of convergence between the Australia and Pacific plates."

"In the region of New Zealand, the 3000 km long Australia-Pacific plate boundary extends from south of Macquarie Island to the southern Kermadec Island chain," reads the USGS summary.

"It includes an oceanic transform (the Macquarie Ridge), two oppositely verging subduction zones (Puysegur and Hikurangi), and a transpressive continental transform, the Alpine Fault through South Island, New Zealand.

"North of New Zealand, the Australia-Pacific boundary stretches east of Tonga and Fiji to 250 km south of Samoa. For 2,200 km the trench is approximately linear, and includes two segments where old (>120 Myr) Pacific oceanic lithosphere rapidly subducts westward (Kermadec and Tonga)."