Experiences · Wildlife
Wildlife
Encounters on nature's terms, never in captivity, always with respect.
The Experience
We only ever promote responsible wildlife encounters, and we choose not to connect our guests with any attraction that holds whales, dolphins or porpoises in captivity. We travel with the true guardians of the wild.
Guardian of
the Sounds
Pete Beech
The Marlborough Sounds, shown by the man who protects it
Pete Beech is acknowledged as one of the great guardians of the Marlborough Sounds, with decades of lived knowledge of its ecology and Māori history, much of it built alongside his late wife Takutai, whose own deep love of this place still shapes how he shares it.
With Pete, the Sounds reveal themselves: the birdlife returning to predator-free sanctuaries, the marine life beneath the still water, the layered history of every bay and headland.
This is ecology and culture entwined, shared by a man who has devoted his life to protecting it. You leave understanding the Sounds not as scenery, but as a living, tended thing.
Ingrid Visser
& the orca
Orca Research Trust
New Zealand's orca, met by the woman who knows them by name
Dr Ingrid Visser has spent more than two decades as New Zealand's foremost orca researcher, founder of the Orca Research Trust, and one of the very few people on Earth who can recognise individual orca on sight.
With Poppy alongside her on the water, you encounter orca and dolphins entirely on their terms — a research-led encounter, not a performance, in waters Ingrid has studied her whole working life.
It is wildlife travel at its most rigorous and most moving: time with an animal most people will only ever see on a screen, shared by the person who knows them best.
“We choose not to connect our guests with attractions that hold whales, dolphins or porpoises in captivity. How we travel matters.”
Ahipara · Responsible By Principle
On The River
Clearwater
with Rachel Kerr
Rachel Kerr's stretch of private Canterbury waterway, Clearwater, is a quiet refuge of spring-fed channels and wetland, its water so clean it barely seems to move, alive with native birdlife you will see almost nowhere else.
Rachel has guided this water for years and reads it like a held breath — where the birds are sheltering, where the light will fall, when to simply stop and watch.
Always on the wild's terms, always in support of those protecting it.
Your Journey Begins
Let us write the
next chapter
Everything you have read here is a beginning, not a brochure. Tell us what moved you, and we will shape a journey around it — bespoke, considered, and unmistakably yours.
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