A Maldivian military diver has 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. Mohamed Mahudhee suffered underwater decompression sickness after searching for the bodies and died in hospital in Male, the capital.
The Italians, according to Italy’s foreign ministry, had “apparently died while attempting to explore caves at a depth of 50 metres”. Authorities suspended the recovery effort on Friday due to bad weather, but resumed on Saturday. Mohamed Hussain Shareef, the Maldivian presidential spokesperson, said Mahudhee’s death “goes to show the difficulty of the mission”.
Mahudhee was part of a group of divers who had briefed the Maldives president, Mohamed Muizzu, on the rescue plan when he visited the search site on Friday. A recovery team of eight divers, working in pairs, had already explored two of the three chambers of the cave on Friday, but were hampered in their efforts to explore the third. Two Italian experts – a deep-sea rescue specialist and a cave diving expert – were expected to join the recovery effort.
In total, five Italians died in the scuba diving accident in Vaavu Atoll on Thursday. The body of the fifth diver was found near the mouth of the cave shortly afterwards, and rescuers believe the remaining four bodies are inside the same cave. 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 their deaths is unknown and is being investigated.
Officials said the incident was the worst single diving accident in the Maldives. The Italians were passengers onboard a 36-metre luxury yacht, the Duke of York, whose operating licence was suspended “indefinitely” on Saturday by the Maldivian ministry of tourism and civil aviation, pending the outcome of an investigation. Shareef said investigators were looking into why the group went below the officially permitted depth of 30 metres.
