Pancake Rocks, Punakaiki by Craig Potton

Photographic Poster

Image size in millimetres: 490 x 340

These limestone blowholes that look like stacked pancakes at Dolomite Point on the South Island's west coast were, according to the Department of Conservation in Punakaiki, formed 30 million years ago when minute fragments of dead marine creatures and plants landed on the seabed 2000 metres below the sea surface. Immense water pressure caused the fragments to solidify into hard and soft layers. Regular earthquakes lifted the limestone above the seabed over millions of years and mildly acidic rain, wind and seawater scultped the unique shapes of the Pancake Rocks.

Posters like Pancake Rocks feature in the Craig Potton Posters and New Zealand Photography collections at New Zealand's specialist online art print shop.