They Entered Paradise… and Never Came Back: The Chilling ‘No Exit’ Error That Killed 5 Italian Divers in Maldives
The five Italian divers who drowned in the Maldives last Thursday likely took a wrong turn and panicked inside an underwater cave with no clear exit, according to the elite recovery team sent to retrieve their bodies.
The bodies of Monica Montefalcone, 52, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, 20, Muriel Oddenino, 31, and Federico Gualtieri, 31, were found on Monday near the entrance to the third and final chamber of the cave system in Vaavu Atoll, at a depth of approximately 165 feet.
The body of their diving instructor, Gianluca Benedetti, 44, was discovered near the entrance to the same chamber.
The cave system consists of a first chamber connected to a second by a corridor roughly 100 feet long and 10 feet wide, according to Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Once inside the second chamber, the entrance to the corridor is obscured by a sandbank. Directly above it lies the entrance to the third chamber, which is a dead end.
The group of Italian divers appears to have entered the third chamber by mistake. They panicked upon realizing there was no way out and ran out of oxygen, according to the team of Finnish divers brought in by the research organization DAN Europe to locate them.
“There was no way out,” Laura Marroni, CEO of DAN Europe, told La Repubblica.
Marroni added that if the group had taken a wrong turn, “it would have been very complex to return, especially with the limited air supply.”
The divers were using standard 12-liter oxygen cylinders, which are not suitable for depths beyond 100 feet, leaving them with very little time to correct their course.
“We’re talking about 10 minutes, maybe even less,” Marroni said. “Realizing that the road is not right, and having little air — maybe after backing down — it terrifies [you]. Then you breathe quickly and the air goes down.”
All five Italians were experienced divers. The exact reasons they undertook such a deep dive without appropriate equipment remain under investigation.
The Finnish recovery team retrieved technical equipment, including GoPro cameras worn by some of the divers, which are expected to provide further insight into what happened — the worst diving tragedy in the history of the Maldives.
The last two bodies were recovered on Wednesday, concluding the mission.
A sixth victim, Maldivian military diver Sgt. Major Mohamed Mahudhee, died on Saturday from decompression sickness while attempting to locate the bodies. Despite being “one of the best” divers in the Maldivian National Defense Force, he had not been trained for this type of mission, according to his military mentor, Shafraz Naeem.
