Best ports to see wildlife/ scenery in NZ

Sorry, I know my thread title is overly broad. Let me explain. We are doing a cruise in March that includes several ports in New Zealand -- a bucket list destination for us. We want to get the most out of this but also have to watch our budget. We are doing a B2B totaling 25 days with many ports. Excursions could easily run into thousands of dollars. So I'm looking at doing many of these ports on our own. And from my research (admittedly limited so far as we have only recently booked

Here is a breakdown of the wildlife by port that we saw during our cruise of NZ which we thoroughly enjoyed: DUNEDIN: Otago Peninsula - Royal Albatross Centre - extremely interesting and just stunning scenery AKAROA: Farm Experience at Paua Bay Sheep Farm - shearing demo, sheep dogs herding and then tea and scones in an utterly beautiful setting WELLINGTON: no wildlife but special mention to the Te Papa Museum (free) particularly the Gallipoli exhibit. NAPIER: National Aquari