Why have there been so many earthquakes lately?

im not exactly ansering your question but im in australia we have just had 2 major floods where thousands died and earthquakes across the country and then in new zealand 2 weeks ago another huge earthquake which killed another few thousand. I went to a locan beach and there was hundreds of dead birds on the sand. Something weird is going on which the planet. Not sure what but its deffinetly not right.

Not sure on the birds/fish but...

Hundreds of earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 4 occur every week. Anything under is not significant enough to really 'make the news'. Haiti experienced a magnitude 6.1, Japan experienced a 9.0, and New Zealand was a 6.6 (I think...). 6.1 and 6.6 earthquakes occur almost everyday somewhere in the world. 9.0 is less likely but there have been a few in recent years and several in the last century or so. These earthquakes in Haiti, Japan, and New Zealand did have catastrophic results but only because they occurred in areas that were densely populated and not built to handle an earthquake of the magnitude they encountered.

Not to mention that the world today is very different from years and years ago. There is very little 'open land' left so of course when an earthquake hits a city now it is far more devastating than it would have been 60 years ago when there weren't as many buildings and homes everywhere.

There are dozens of Earthquakes somewhere on Earth every day! A geologist on some news station just said that the latest Earthquakes are not out of the ordinary in frequency. Just unusual in the severity because there are more people and more houses being built than 100 years ago.

As admired because the San Andreas (Fault Zone) is that you and that i stay close to, that's a mode of 900-mile lengthy remodel fault, that's bodily incapable of rupturing lengthy adequate, even in an idealized difficulty, to reason any tremendous-mega-extremely-undesirable-disaster earthquake. The 1906 large San Francisco earthquake, predicted at about a 7.9 Richter importance is about the utmost life like seismic journey that we'd have. in case you're taking a seem at the position there *quite* massive earthquakes happen, they're alongside convergent (subduction) obstacles, the position megathrust faulting can happen, because there is *a thoughts* more advantageous skill saved there to be by marvel released. You and that i do exactly not stay close to adequate skill. No remodel boundary does. no longer purely do we no longer frame of mind the most important in historic past, yet no longer even the most important of the averaged "tremendous" earthquakes. also, in basic terms in case you think those earthquakes are appropriate, and finally "placing us up" for one, that's no longer available. those earthquakes contain 8 diverse plates, on 2 sorts of boundary, 1000's of miles aside, and months or weeks or days aside. the purely element the makes them appropriate is ordinary twist of destiny. each and every once in a lengthy time period you'll have some earthquakes in a short era of time -- even though it is in basic terms danger. each and every thing is pushed by plate tectonics, that's pushed by deep and huge mantle convection. No geologic conspiracy, I promise.

I honestly don't know enough about plate tectonics to properly answer the question on Earthquakes.

However, the mass deaths of animals are not uncommon. They happen all the time. What was unusual was their being reported. Made it seem like there was a sudden boom.