UPDATED 9.20AM: The East Cape has been rocked by a 'severe' 5.8 magnitude earthquake.

It struck at 8.41am at a depth of 7km, 75km north-east of Te Araroa.

An earlier report put the quake at magnitude 5.3 and of strong intensity, but this has since been upgraded. 

It is not yet known if there are reports of injuries or damage.

Owner of the Hicks Bay motel Jodi Anderson says she was sitting at the reception desk when it began.

"My coffee started moving and it was almost a repeat of the one we had on September 2nd - long and slow," she said.

"It was almost a repeat of the one we had at the start of September - it was long and slow," she said.

"The plates in the kitchen were starting to clang, the bottles were starting to knock together." 

Anderson said the quake went on for about 20 seconds. 

She and her staff were preparing to stop, drop and hold when the shaking stopped. 

In Whakatane, Ani Rollerston described the tremor as a "gentle roll" which lasted a few seconds

"Enough to wake me from a nap after getting up to watch great game by the All Blacks."

An earlier 4.3 earthquake reported near Seddon was later updated as 'ghost quake' by GeoNet. 

Shaky Sunday! The East Cape quake has been reviewed to M5.8 and the M4.5 in Seddon after, was a ghost quake. #eqnz

— GeoNet (@geonet) October 8, 2016

GNS duty seismologist Anna Kaiser said the quake was part of the sequence of aftershocks that followed the larger 7.1 quake to hit the region earlier this year.

In September, tsunami warnings were triggered, after the large quake struck off the north-east of Te Araroa, with numerous throughout the North Island reporting being shaken.

"It’s located right in the heart of the recent seismic activity in that area," Kaiser said. "This goes on for weeks and months after a big earthquake, or even longer."

She said the size and location of the quake meant it was an aftershock of the original 7.1, not a new one of its own.

While it had been classed as a severe earthquake Kaiser said it wasn’t the biggest aftershock the area had had since September.

"On the same day as the 7.1 we did see some larger ones, so it’s up there," she said. "But it’s not the biggest one.”

Kaiser said people on the East Cape would have likely felt the earthquake and others around the Bay of Plenty and even further afield in Auckland and Wellington might have felt a tremor.

She said the aftershocks were likely to continue in the coming weeks and days – but this was well within the norm of what happened after a larger quake.

"A 5.8 we could see a reinvigoration of aftershocks in the area after this, but typically we would see this anyway,” she said. "The most likely scenario is an ongoing aftershock sequence."