While luxurious-looking cruise ships fill social media with ‘floating 5-star’ hotel vibes, often these experiences offer little more than staying in a fancy hotel (ideal if that’s all you’re after). For those looking for a more authentic and enriching experience, New Zealand family-owned business Heritage Expeditions has its foundations firmly rooted in the importance of conservation, offering small-ship cruises to some of the wildest, least-explored and biologically rich regions on the planet.
From Marlborough Sounds and Abel Tasman National Park, to the heart of Antarctica and New Zealand’s subantarctic islands, despite their geographical difference, each of these destinations is rich in bird and animal life, as well as other wonders of nature.
And Heritage Expeditions boast more than four decades of experience in putting together ‘lifetime memory’ cruises, which also educate around conservation. The enthralling itinerary lineup also includes trips to the remote islands of Japan, Australia’s Kimberly coast, Indonesia and Melanesia.
Adventure travel enthusiast Isaac Wilson (also fortunate to work everyday as marketing manger for Heritage Expeditions) shares a recent adventure to New Zealand and Australia’s subantarctic islands, including the Snares, located approximately 200km south of the South Island and to the south-southwest of Stewart Island.
We’re surrounded by Snares crested penguins. Everywhere we look there are hundreds of the dapper, dinner jacket-attired birds with rockstar, highlighter-yellow feathered brows. They fill the water, rafting and porpoising around our Zodiacs, while hundreds more navigate a towering, near-vertical ancient granite cliff face affectionately known as the ‘Penguin Slide’.
The birds are kept busy scaling the slide several times a day to feed growing chicks, which are tucked away in nests under giant tree daisies, flourishing more than one-hundred metres above.
At the slide’s base, huddles of penguins time their leap of faith into a foaming Southern Ocean amid swirling ribbons of bull kelp, into water patrolled by New Zealand/Hooker’s sea lions and leopard seals. All of this takes place as even more penguins torpedo out of the water, crash land onto the rocky surrounds and start their ascent after a morning fishing.
It’s an extraordinary sight. Some 50,000-plus penguins call the Snares home. This tiny clutch of jagged islands some 100 kilometres southwest of Stewart Island is the only place in the world you can see them.
The Snares visit is part of Heritage Expeditions signature subantarctic islands voyage – Galapagos of the Southern Ocean. The voyage’s name references the astounding numbers and diversity of wildlife that call these seemingly inhospitable, wild and remote (indeed, the world’s most remote) scattering of subantarctic islands home.
Despite their prolific numbers, it’s not all about penguins. The Snares are also home to more nesting sea birds than the entire British Isles combined! Both the air and water are alive with the activity of thousands of Sooty Shearwaters, Buller’s and beautifully marked Salvin’s Albatross nesting and wheeling in the sky above. New Zealand Fur Seals bask in the sun on rocky recliners, while New Zealand/Hooker’s Sea Lions escort our Zodiacs as we slice through the water, leaving the main ship behind.
Despite being internationally renowned wildlife havens and UNESCO World Heritage listed, due to the tyranny of distance the subantarctic islands remain relatively unknown. However, it was their remoteness, incredible wilderness, wildlife, fascinating early history of failed farms and successful conservation stories combined with an exclusivity restricting visits to the months of November – February which helped propel them into the international spotlight. In late 2024, global travel bible Condé Nast Traveler included New Zealand and Australia’s subantarctic islands, along with Heritage Expeditions and its voyages, on its iconic ‘The 25 Best Places to Go in 2025’.
The subantarctic islands received another boost when Kiwi Hollywood legend Sir Sam Neill regaled listeners of Radio New Zealand’s Summer Weekends’ show praising his subantarctic island adventures with Heritage Expeditions as “a wonderful time, I cannot recommend it more highly!”.
Like Sam Neill, we’re obsessed with the thrilling, and often comical, antics of the crested penguins on what is easily one of the more intense grocery runs in the animal kingdom. It’s easy to see why he was so enamoured with them, describing his experience as a “dream fulfilled” to his 800,000-plus followers on Instagram.
Rare and unusual penguins are ever present on our adventures among New Zealand’s precious subantarctic islands. On Enderby Island, in the Auckland Islands, we give way to waddles of yellow-eyed penguins/hoiho traversing the ‘Penguin Highway’, also busy feeding hungry chicks. One of the world’s rarest species, and endangered on mainland New Zealand, these subantarctic cousins appear to be holding their own in the cooler southern climate. While most penguins are considered feisty (we’re looking at you Adélie), yellow-eyed are shy, reclusive birds with less bushy brows, and more of a sweeping blaze of yellow eyeliner.
Enderby Island, and Sandy Bay in particular, where we have come ashore in our Zodiacs, is also a crucial breeding ground for New Zealand/Hooker’s sea lions – the world’s rarest sea lion. They litter the beach lazing, giving birth, nursing and, alarmingly, reproducing. All the while, clouds of sand erupt as Beach Master bulls violently battle it out for dominance in a scene ripped straight from a David Attenborough documentary.
Wildlife ahoy!
Attenborough isn’t far from mind as I spend the day traversing an 11-kilometre loop of the island with his former collaborator and legendary wildlife filmmaker in his own right, Nigel Marven. Marven, a self-confessed penguin afficionado, is travelling back-to-back on three Heritage Expeditions voyages to film his upcoming documentary The Penultimate Penguin.
Marven’s next voyage will see him travelling down to the ‘heart of Antarctica’ – the Ross Sea, where he’ll film and observe emperor penguins for the first time, but not before we visit neighbouring namesake Auckland Island and its white-capped albatross colony. Unlike Enderby Island, Auckland Island isn’t pest free (yet) and years of unchecked feral pigs, cats and mice are taking their toll on both the wildlife and vegetation. The comparison between the islands is staggering. Heritage Expeditions plans to help change this, partnering with New Zealand Nature Fund, Department of Conservation, Ngāi Tahu, and Island Ocean Connection Challenge on the Maukahuka Project.
Natural wonders
At Musgrave Inlet we catch eastern rockhopper penguins, rocking larger, more flamboyant brows than the Snares crested penguins, before exploring a network of stunning sea caves, including a natural, open-topped cathedral where crystalline blue water meets colourful, marbled stone walls crowned with cascading lush vegetation.
During our visit to Campbell Island, we clock occasional eastern rockhoppers and keep our eyes peeled for the small number of erect-crested and yellow-eyed penguins known to inhabit these shores. Though we’re soon distracted exploring towering cliff tops and wading waist-deep through colourful fields of gigantic alien-looking flowers known as megaherbs. It’s a sight described by famous botanist Joseph Hooker as a “floral display second to none outside the tropics,” and he’s not wrong.
We spend a magical afternoon at the southern royal albatross colony as nesting couples affectionately groom, rowdy juveniles engaged in the raucous dating game of ‘gamming’ and are surprised by the slightly clumsy, endless landings and take-offs of these otherwise majestic masters of flight.
At Macquarie Island we discover penguin nirvana. Geographically New Zealand, but politically Australian, ‘Macca’, as it’s known by Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Services rangers, is the only place in the world where royal penguins breed – some 400,000 pairs of them.
Another punk rock, bushy-browed entry, our visit to ‘Penguin City’ is a chaotically captivating, multi-sensory assault as penguins screech, feed and guard their young against predatory skua attacks, and run the gauntlet of jostling, blubbery elephant seals to and from the beach.
Gentoo penguins also make an appearance, but nothing prepares us for the cuteness overload of moon-eyed weaners (elephant seal pups) staring up at us as we wander around Buckles Bay, or the sheer number of regal King penguins covering every inch of beach at Lusitania Bay. It’s standing room only for the hundreds of thousands of King penguins nesting defiantly around the ruins of Joseph Hatch’s animal oil extracting digesters, which decimated the local elephant seal and penguin populations, and left a cringe-inducing legacy for the former Invercargill mayor. They fly through the water below us, raft and porpoise around our Zodiacs, some even give our inflatable rubber boat an inquisitive peck, while others try to jump in with us.
Travel with a difference
Whether you’re a birder, photographer, wildlife enthusiast, conservationist, or simply an adventurous spirit, Heritage Expeditions offers an unparalleled travel experience.
A legacy of conservation and responsible adventure travel
Family-owned and operated, Heritage Expeditions pioneered responsible travel in New Zealand and is Australasia’s only small-ship expedition cruise company. Founded by Christchurch’s Rodney and Shirley Russ in 1984, Heritage Expeditions celebrated its 40th anniversary this year, while the Russ family, a family of conservationists, biologists, botanists and adventurers celebrated more than 50 years of conservation in New Zealand, and the precious places they visit and help protect.
The genesis of Heritage Expeditions and its pioneering ethos of conservation-based responsible travel came about thanks to Rodney’s work with the New Zealand Wildlife Service; helping save the Chatham Island black robin from extinction, the kākāpo in Fiordland, and rediscovering the previously thought extinct Campbell Island flightless teal. Now run by sons Aaron and Nathan, who grew up in the family business, the pair proudly continue their parents’ legacy.
Heritage Expeditions are the world’s most experienced Southern Ocean operators and have been exploring and supporting the conservation of the subantarctic islands of New Zealand and Australia for more than 35 years and travelling down into the ‘heart of Antarctica’ the Ross Sea for more than 30. Founding members of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), their industry-leading partnership with South Island iwi Ngāi Tahu has resulted in the world’s first indigenous-led Antarctic research programme, Murihiku ki te Tonga.
All Heritage Expeditions voyages contribute to conservation and support the remote villages and communities they visit. They provide experiential learning and funds for research and management, deliver school supplies to remote villages and offer genuine opportunities to be involved in actual citizen science with some of the world’s top researchers and scientists.
Heritage Expeditions voyages also explore coastal New Zealand; along Australia’s Kimberley coast; through the Pacific Islands of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea; and the Asian islands of Indonesia, Philippines and Japan on their purpose-built expedition ships – flagship Heritage Adventurer (140-guest) and expedition yacht Heritage Explorer (18-guest).
