We are underway on our 48-day long expedition offshore of the west coast of Mexico near Acapulco, where the young Cocos oceanic plate dives beneath the North American plate. Most of this subduction zone, often referred to as “the Mexican segment of the Middle America Trench,” has produced large earthquakes in the last 100 years, including the dramatic 8.0-magnitude Michoacán earthquake in 1985 that killed more than 10,000 people in Mexico City. One of the exceptions is the Guerrero seismic gap. This portion of the Mexican subduction zone has not ruptured in a large (M>7) earthquake since at least 1911. Instead, large and relatively shallow slow-slip events—which release energy slowly over days to months without generating strong seismic waves—occur there approximately every 3–5 years.
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Source: Phys.org