Santiago/London - The first group of passengers and crew members from a Canadian-owned cruise ship that sank in the Antarctic Ocean after striking ice have arrived in mainland Chile and were on their way home on Sunday. The 77 people from a total of 154 on board landed in Punta Arenas at the southern tip of South America after a two-and-a-half-hour flight, a Chilean air force spokesman, Reinaldo Neuling, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The MS Explorer's 11 remaining passengers and 66 staff spent a second night on King George Island after bad weather prevented them from being airlifted out.
They are to remain in Chilean and Uruguayan military barracks until the weather improves.
The Explorer, which was punctured when it hit an iceberg Friday, sank overnight into the icy depths.
GAP Adventures, the ship's Toronto-based operator did not comment on whether passengers would receive compensation, saying it was concentrating on their immediate needs.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, have called for strict limits to be placed on numbers of tourist boat trips into the Antarctic.
"The Antarctic is the world's last unspoiled wilderness," a spokesman for the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) was quoted in The Observer on Sunday.
"It is also one of the most dangerous places on Earth," he added. "Yet every year we are sending in dozens of boats full of tourists. We are going to need to show much more care about sending in tourists after this."
GAP Adventures said 24 Britons, 14 US citizens, 12 Canadians, 10 Australians, 17 Dutch, four Irish, four Swiss, two Belgians, three Danes, one French, one German, one Swede, two Argentinians, one Colombian, one Japanese, one Chinese and two people from Hong Kong were aboard the ship.
The rescue operation was being co-ordinated by the US Coast Guard in Norfolk, Virginia, with authorities in Ushuaia, Argentina. Argentina had sent two boats to the rescue.
