A tragic deep-sea diving accident off the coast of the Maldives has claimed six lives total, including five Italian divers and one Maldivian recovery diver, and the remains of the four remaining Italian victims have finally been flown home nearly two weeks after the incident, a Maldivian government spokesperson confirmed Saturday.
The disaster unfolded on May 14, when a group of five Italian divers set out to explore an uncharted underwater cave in the Vaavu Atoll region of the Maldives. The group descended far past the Maldives’ official recreational depth limit of 30 meters, reaching the cave mouth at 50 meters and eventually penetrating to the cave’s innermost chamber around 60 meters below sea level. Shortly after entering the cave, all five divers went missing, cutting off contact with surface teams. On the day of the disappearance, recovery crews retrieved the body of the group’s diving instructor, Gianluca Benedetti, just outside the cave entrance, and his remains were immediately returned to Italy.
What followed was a complex, high-stakes recovery operation that itself turned deadly. When a Maldivian military diver assigned to the mission, Mohamed Mahudhee, died during an early recovery attempt, the operation was temporarily halted amid safety concerns. To overcome the extreme depth and challenging cave conditions, three specialized Finnish deep cave diving experts were brought in to join the mission. Last week, the expert team successfully located the four remaining bodies clustered together in the cave’s deepest chamber.
The victims have all been formally identified: the group included Monica Montefalcone, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Genoa; her 24-year-old daughter Giorgia Sommacal; Federico Gualtieri, a practicing marine biologist; Muriel Oddenino, a marine researcher; and lead instructor Benedetti. Maldivian authorities have already revealed key inconsistencies in the group’s dive permit application: while the trip did receive official approval, the submitted proposal did not disclose the exact location of the cave the team planned to explore, and at least two of the five divers were not listed on the official researcher permit submitted to regulators.
In a press statement Saturday, Maldives President’s Spokesperson Mohamed Hussain Shareef announced that two separate formal investigations have been launched into the tragedy. The first probe will examine the circumstances that led to the deaths of the five Italian divers, while the second will specifically investigate the on-duty death of Mahudhee during the recovery effort. Shareef added that Italian authorities have agreed to share any autopsy findings from the repatriated remains to support the Maldivian investigations. Early Saturday morning, the four remains were officially repatriated to Italy, bringing a painful chapter of the tragedy to a close as authorities work to uncover what went wrong.