New Zealand Sub-antarctic Islands Tours

Small ship-based tours. Includes tours to the Chatham Islands, Bounty Islands, Antipodes, Campbell Island, Macquarie, Auckland Islands and The Snares.

A group of young Southern Royal albatross, Diomedea epomophora, congregate to display and check each other out on a tussock slope on Campbell Island. This is just one of the incredible sights possible on a New Zealand Sub-antarctic voyage.

Description

Listen to the names: Snares, Bounty, Antipodes, Auckland, Campbell, Macquarie and Chatham Islands. They are music to the ears of ‘Birders’. Apart from the Chathams, these islands are probably more isolated now than they were when they were discovered in the late 1700s and early 1800s and were regularly visited by sealers, whalers and government steamers searching for castaway sailors.

The islands occupy the tempestuous latitudes of the Roaring Forties and the Furious Fifties but they are also known as the Albatross Latitudes and with good reason. Ten of the world’s albatross species breed in the region; five of them nowhere else but here! In fact this zone where the air is never still, hosts the most diverse collection of seabirds in the world. More than 40 species breed down here – that is at least 11 percent of the entire world’s seabird population.

With the exception of the Chathams, the islands are all designated UNESCO World Heritage sites and are afforded the highest conservation status and protection by the Australian and New Zealand governments, so passage to their shores is not granted lightly. There are also islands that we visit within the Chatham Archipelago with similar status and protection.

Expeditions to these islands have huge appeal to pelagic enthusiasts, penguin fanatics and those interested in island endemics. But you don’t have to be a keen birder to enjoy these voyages. People interested in islands and island ecology, botany, geology and an increasing number of photographers have enjoyed these trips immensely, as have those interested in the history of southern ocean discovery and exploration.

Cost

Please email us for the more information and pricing for these tours.