Maldivian diver dies in recovery of Italian cave divers

A Maldivian military diver died during a high-risk operation to recover the bodies of four Italian scuba divers who drowned while exploring a deep underwater cave in the Maldives, officials said Sunday.

Mohamed Mahudhee, a member of the Maldivian National Defence Force, suffered underwater decompression sickness after searching for the Italians, who Italy’s Foreign Ministry said had “apparently died while attempting to explore caves at a depth of 50 metres (164ft).”

Mohamed Hussain Shareef, the Maldivian presidential spokesperson, confirmed Mahudhee died after being transferred to a hospital in the capital, Male.

“The death goes to show the difficulty of the mission,” Shareef said.

Authorities temporarily suspended recovery efforts Friday due to bad weather but resumed the search Saturday.

Mahudhee was part of a group of divers who briefed Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu on the rescue plan when he visited the search site Friday.

Five Italians died in the scuba diving accident Thursday in Vaavu Atoll in the Indian Ocean archipelago, Italy’s Foreign Ministry said.

The body of the fifth diver was found near the mouth of a cave shortly after the incident, and rescuers believe the remaining four divers are inside the same cave, which has three large chambers connected by narrow passages.

A recovery team of eight divers, working in pairs, had explored two of the three chambers Friday but were hampered in efforts to reach the third chamber.

The search resumed Saturday, with two Italians – a deep-sea rescue expert and a cave diving expert – expected to join the effort.

Italy’s Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, said the Italian government “will do everything possible to recover the bodies of our compatriots.”

The deceased have been identified as Monica Montefalcone, an associate ecology professor at the University of Genoa; her daughter Giorgia Sommacal; marine biologist Federico Gualtieri; researcher Muriel Oddenino; and diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti, whose body has been recovered.

The cause of death remains unknown and is under investigation.

Officials called the incident the worst single diving accident in the Maldives, an archipelago of 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered across hundreds of miles of the Indian Ocean.

The University of Genoa said Montefalcone and Oddenino were on an official scientific mission to monitor marine environments and study climate change effects on tropical biodiversity.

Montefalcone’s husband, Carlo Sommacal, said he believed an incident must have occurred and ruled out recklessness on his wife’s part. “Something must have happened,” he told Italian TV channel Rete 4.

He added that his wife, an experienced diver who survived the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 while diving off Kenya, “had two lives – one on land and one in her environment, the water.”

He described her as a disciplined diver who carefully weighed risks before each descent and recalled her telling him, “This one I can do, you can’t.”

Diving at 50 metres exceeds the maximum depth recommended for recreational divers by most scuba certifying agencies. Depths beyond 40 metres are considered technical diving requiring specialized training and equipment. The recreational diving limit in the Maldives is 30 metres (98ft), and experts warn cave divers can easily become disoriented or lost, particularly when sediment clouds reduce visibility.

The Italians were passengers aboard a 36-metre luxury yacht, the Duke of York, whose operating license was suspended “indefinitely” Saturday by the Maldivian Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation, pending investigation. A website link for the ship was not working Saturday, and the yacht’s owner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shareef said investigators are looking into why the group went below the officially permitted depth of 30 metres.

Greenpeace Italia paid tribute to Montefalcone as a passionate advocate for marine protection and said it would miss “her professionalism and her advice immensely,” recalling the “special light she had in her eyes” when speaking about the sea and the importance of protecting it.