Get you up to speed: Mystery of Maldives divers killed in ‘Shark Cave’ may have been solved | News World
Six people, including ecology professor Monica Montefalcone and her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, died during a diving incident in the Devana Kandu cave system in the Maldives. The group, comprising five Italians and their diving instructor, was found after becoming trapped in a dead-end corridor during a private dive.
The Italian tour operator, implicated in the incident, has denied any knowledge of the group’s unauthorised deep dive, according to its lawyer. An investigation is ongoing to ascertain the precise cause of death, with theories including potential disorientation within the cave system due to strong currents.
The investigation into the deaths of five Italian divers is ongoing, with officials seeking to determine the circumstances that led to the incident and whether proper protocols were followed. The Italian tour operator responsible for the diving trip has denied authorising the deep dive beyond local limits, while Finnish experts have indicated the possibility of the divers mistakenly entering the wrong tunnel.
What remains unclear — It is still unknown whether a strong current contributed to the divers’ tragic deaths.
Finnish experts suggest divers may have taken wrong tunnel in Maldives deaths
In total six people have died during the dive, including ecology professor Monica Montefalcone (left) and her daughter Giorgia Sommacal (right)
Finnish divers may have solved the mystery surrounding the deaths of five tourists in a ‘pitch black cave’ in the Maldives.
The experts have suggested that the group might have taken the wrong tunnel as they left the cave complex.
Five Italians died during a dive into the 160 ft deep ‘shark cave’ in the Devana Kandu cave system last week.
The bodies of ecology professor Monica Montefalcone, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, researcher Muriel Oddenino, and marine biologist Federico Gualtieri have now all been retrieved.
Federico Gualtieri, a marine biologist, died during the cave dive on Thursday.
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They were accompanied by diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti, whose body was found last week.
They were on a research trip looking at soft corals but are uderstood to have gone on a private dive on Thursday morning when the group is believed to have died around 160 ft deep.
They had launched the expedition from the Duke of York yacht, which did not have a permit allowing dives of more than 100ft.
In total, six people have been killed as part of the cave dive, with Maldivian military rescue diver Mohamed Mahudhee dying from decompression illness on Saturday during a recovery mission.
The deaths have been called the worst diving incident in the history of the island nation and sparked a frenzy of questions about how events unfolded.
A team of Finnish experts has now suggested that the Italian researchers may have taken the wrong tunnel on their way out of the cave.
The pro-divers, working for Dan Europe, discovered the Italians in a corridor with a dead end inside the underwater complex, Italy’s La Repubblica daily reported.
Monica Montefalcone one of the five Italian scuba divers who died (Picture: Greenpeace via AP)
Gianluca Benedetti’s body was the first to be recovered last week
‘There was no way out from there’
‘There was no way out from there,’ the company’s CEO, Laura Marroni, was quoted by La Repubblica as saying.
Marroni revealed the details of the cave complex and how the doomed dive might have played out.
She told the newspaper that the cave system begins with a first large, very bright cavern with a sandy bottom.
At the end of that room is a badly lit corridor, but with good visibility from artificial lighting.
The passageway is almost 30 metres long and three metres across, which leads to a second chamber of the cave.
That second chamber is a large, round space with no natural light.
However, between the corridor and the second chamber is a sandbank.
While it is easy to get over the sandbank into the second chamber on the way in, when you turn around to leave, the bank almost looks like a wall.
That ‘wall’ then hides the corridor behind it, the paper said.
On the left of the sandbank is another corridor – only a few dozen metres long.
‘The divers’ bodies were all found inside, as if they had mistaken it for the right one,’ La Repubblica reported.
Researcher Muriel Oddenino had been on an official scientific mission with Ms Montefalcone prior to the dive (Picture: Facebook)
If they had taken that corridor by mistake, ‘then it would have been very difficult to return, especially with the limited air supply’, Marroni said.
The expert estimated that the Italians had about 10 minutes or less of air left.
She added: ”Realising that the path is the wrong one and having little air, perhaps after going back and forth, is terrifying. Then you breathe quickly, and the air supply decreases.’
Monica’s husband and Giorgia’s dad, Carlo Sommacal, told Italian media his wife ‘was one of the best divers in the world’ and would never put his daughter at risk.
He said she had carried out about 5,000 dives and was ‘never reckless’.
The Italian tour operator that managed the diving trip has denied authorising or knowing about the group’s deep dive, which exceeded local limits, its lawyer told Italian local publication Corriere della Sera.
An investigation is underway to establish the cause of death.
Another theory being considered is that the divers were sucked into a cave by a strong ‘freak’ current, known as the ‘Venturi effect’.
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