Seventeen students from Brock University, in Ontario, Canada, were among 22 tourism students who made a field trip to Sandfly Bay, on the Otago Peninsula, yesterday afternoon.
Their home university is situated in the city of St Catharines and is part of a Unesco Biosphere Reserve.
They also live close to Niagara Falls, an international tourism feature, which attracts more than 10 million people each year.
Some Canadian students have studied at the annual Otago University summer school previously, but this is the first time a group of Canadians has taken part.
The students, who are taking a third-year paper on "ecotourism operations", were accompanied on their field trip by Prof James Higham, who heads the Otago tourism department; Prof David Brown, of Brock University; and Dr Erlet Cater, a specialist in ecotourism and sustainable tourism from Reading University, England, who is teaching much of the paper.
Mark Jemison (20), a third-year BA (Hons) student majoring in tourism and environment at Brock University, said he was enjoying the "big improvement" in weather since arriving.
However, that was not the main reason he and his fellow Canadian students had come - Dunedin was a good place to study ecotourism issues, he said.
Prof Higham was "excited and enthusiastic" about the chance to work more closely with staff and students from Brock University, with which Otago University has an academic exchange agreement.
The involvement of Dr Cater added to the special occasion, he said.