The bodies of the final two missing Italian scuba divers who died while exploring underwater caves in the Maldives last week have been recovered, the Italian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
Five people died last Thursday, and three bodies had already been recovered in a complex recovery operation involving Maldivian and international dive teams. A sixth diver, a member of the Maldivian military, died while trying to recover the bodies, in one of the worst diving disasters in the island country’s recent history.
The extreme depth and the cave system’s complex layout posed major challenge for the rescue operation, said Cristian Pellegrini, a spokesman for Divers Alert Network, or DAN, an international diving safety group involved in the recovery. “The further you enter into the cave system, the more it narrows, and the harder it is to extract a victim,” he said.
Expert divers assembled by DAN have been working in the area since Monday. They were set to return to the cave on Thursday to ensure that they collected the victims’ equipment, Mr. Pellegrini said. Two of the dead divers wore cameras, and all five were outfitted with a dive computer, which logs data like black boxes do in planes. “They are very precious tools,” he said, adding that DAN would hand them over to investigators. “They can help us piece together a story that, at this moment, is still a mystery.”
The Italians were experienced divers: Prof. Monica Montefalcone, a marine ecologist at the University of Genoa; Giorgia Sommacal, her daughter; Federico Gualtieri, one of Professor Montefalcone’s former students; Muriel Oddenino, a research fellow at the university; and Gianluca Benedetti, a diving instructor.
But swimming in complex cave systems at extreme depths can be challenging even for veteran divers.
On Thursday, the five divers descended to visit a cave that was more than 160 feet, or 50 meters, below the surface. The recreational diving limit in the Maldives is around 98 feet and anything deeper requires specialized equipment. Mr. Pellegrini said that DAN’s initial evaluations indicated that the Italians were outfitted for recreational diving, not technical cave diving.
The Maldivian authorities launched a search operation after the divers failed to resurface and a person on their boat issued a distress call. The authorities soon recovered the body of Mr. Benedetti, DAN said, almost 200 feet below the surface — far deeper than the group had planned to dive.
The recovery operation was complex. After Sgt. Mohamed Mahdhee, a veteran diver with the Maldives National Defense Force, died on Saturday from decompression illness, the authorities temporarily suspended the search effort.
DAN then assembled an international group of elite divers to find the four missing Italians. DAN has been part of other complex operations before — the group also helped in the rescue of the Thai soccer team that was trapped in a cave in 2018.
Three Finnish divers arrived on Sunday to provide expert advice and perform the deeper, more technical dives. They used advanced equipment, including underwater scooters and machines that can recycle exhaled air so that divers can stay underwater for longer. Still, they could only dive for a maximum of four hours, Mr. Pellegrini said.
On Monday, the divers found the four other bodies. The Italian divers had started exploring a cave illuminated by natural light, Mr. Pellegrini said. They had then swum through a rocky passageway that is nearly 100-feet long to a chamber where there was no natural light. The bodies were found in a recess in the dark cave’s wall.
On Tuesday, the divers recovered the bodies of Professor Montefalcone and Mr. Gualtieri, DAN and the Italian Foreign Ministry said. Ms. Sommacal and Ms. Oddenino were brought to the surface on Wednesday, they said.
The authorities are working to figure out what happened.
The Maldivian police said it had launched a criminal investigation. In a statement, the Maldivian authorities said they were looking into whether the trip had adhered to safety protocols.
The Italian news agency ANSA has reported that prosecutors in Rome have opened an investigation into the disaster, and plan to interview other Italians who were on the expedition and review evidence from the recovered equipment. Autopsies will be conducted on all five bodies in Italy, the ANSA report added.
Amelia Nierenberg is a Times reporter covering international news from London.
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