Heritage Expeditions

Heritage Expeditions grew out of conservation work. Its founder, Rodney Russ, was a biologist with the New Zealand Wildlife Service who came to believe that carefully managed visitors would make the best advocates for the places he studied. The company he started in the 1980s is now run by his sons, and it still treats a voyage as something close to a field trip.

Its home territory is the Subantarctic: the Snares, the Auckland and Campbell islands and Macquarie Island, windswept outposts south of New Zealand that hold albatross, penguins and sea lions in great numbers and receive very few visitors. Longer voyages continue to the Ross Sea and the historic huts of Scott and Shackleton. Groups are small, the expedition staff are specialists, and the emphasis falls on time ashore and on wildlife.