An investigation is now underway into the deadliest diving tragedy to ever strike the island paradises of the Maldives, following the deaths of five Italian nationals on a caving expedition last Thursday, May 14.
The bodies of all five scuba divers who perished on the trip, Monica Montefalcone, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, Federico Gualtieri, Muriel Oddenino, and instructor Gianluca Benedetti, have now been recovered by teams of expert divers.
But what exactly caused the group, which had a couple of experienced divers alongside less experienced ones being led by an instructor, to perish deep in a cave network almost 200ft under the ocean’s surface is unclear.
Experts have spent the last week poring over the little information about the expedition that has been shared with the public, raising theories from equipment malfunctions to poor planning, but the diving team who recovered their bodies have now weighed in on the debate.
Five Italian divers have died, along with a rescue diver from the Maldives
These professional rescue divers from Finland, working for research company DAN Europe, spent three hours descending hundreds of feet under Vaavu Atoll to locate and recover the four bodies that remained deep within the cave system.
The fifth body, that of the expedition’s dive instructor, had been recovered on the same day the team failed to resurface, as it lay near the entrance to the cave. The other four remaining bodies lay much deeper inside.
The Finnish divers located these four, Montefalcone, Sommacal, Gualtieri, and Oddenino, deeper inside the difficult 200m-long cave network. They were found two ‘rooms’ deep into the undersea cavern, facing a dead-end corridor.
Laura Marroni, DAN Europe’s CEO, told Italian media that ‘there was no way out from there,’ before explaining the cave’s complicated layout and the ‘sand wall’ that could have trapped the expedition inside.
