5 Italians die while scuba diving deep caves in the Maldives

The diving trip descended into the turquoise waters of the Maldives with decades of experience in tow: a marine scientist, her college-age daughter, a research fellow, a former student and a diving instructor among them.

They dropped into extraordinary depths, seeking to explore underwater caves where soft coral thrives and batfish take shelter. But the divers never resurfaced, in what authorities have called one of the worst diving accidents in the island nation’s recent history.

Five Italian nationals died Thursday on the dive, according to Italy’s Foreign Ministry and Maldives police. They included Monica Montefalcone, a marine ecologist at the University of Genoa; her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, a biomedical engineering student at the same university; Muriel Oddenino, a research fellow; Federico Gualtieri, a former student of the ecologist; and Gianluca Benedetti, a diving instructor.

In Italy, the tragedy has made headlines, as relatives and research colleagues tried to make sense of what could have gone wrong, and how divers with so much experience could have died. Montefalcone’s husband, Carlo Sommacal, told La Repubblica newspaper that his wife was a conscientious diver.

“My only certainty is that my wife is one of the best scuba divers on the face of the earth,” he said. “She would never have put the life of our daughter or other kids at risk.”

Montefalcone, 51, was in the Maldives as part of a research trip to monitor the marine environment, with a particular focus on how climate change is affecting this vulnerable part of the Indian Ocean, the University of Genoa said in a statement. Oddenino was a research fellow working with her, but Giorgia Sommacal and Gaultieri were not part of the research trip.

The university also said that the dive was not taken under its supervision.

“Scuba diving was in no way part of the activities planned for the scientific mission but was undertaken on a personal basis,” the statement said.

The dive Thursday was heading toward underwater caves near the Vaavu Atoll, where a wall of reef formations drops down to more than 100 feet, according to the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, an international scuba diving organization. Italian authorities said the divers were trying to explore caves at a depth of about 164 feet.

Around midday, the Maldives coast guard said it received a distress call when the divers failed to resurface. The island nation’s authorities launched a search by sea and air, with the coast guard joined by vessels from the National Defense Force, local police and a nearby resort.

The operation was “hazardous” and “high risk,” with divers needing specialized equipment to search the caves, the defense force said in a statement. Just after 6 p.m., divers with a tour vessel recovered a body from a depth of 60 meters, greater than the maximum depth of 50 meters for commercial diving. The body was not identified.

The search for the remaining four divers continued Friday, but poor weather had hampered the dive, Italy’s Foreign Ministry said. There were at least 20 other Italians on the expedition who did not go on the dive and were unharmed, the ministry said.

Maldives police said it launched a criminal investigation into what had happened. In a statement, Maldivian authorities said they were looking into whether the trip had adhered to safety protocols, including weather alerts.

Benedetti was the operations manager of Albatros Top Boats, an Italian tour company that organizes trips to the Maldives. He was both a skipper and a qualified scuba diving instructor, according to the company website. Originally from Padua, he had quit his job in Italy’s banking and finance industry to pursue scuba diving in 2017, the website said.

An employee of the company declined to comment.

Montefalcone and Oddenino were also experienced divers, according to people who knew them. On social media, Oddenino shared a video of Montefalcone leading a dive in the Maldives in 2021. Gaultieri, a recent graduate, described himself on social media as a licensed diving instructor.

Montefalcone visited the Maldives at least once a year, monitoring the coral reefs on the ecologically fragile islands, according to a former colleague, Giorgio Bavestrello. He and others added that her students were enamored with her teaching about the ocean.

Oddenino came to the University of Genoa as a researcher, where Montefalcone supervised her work, and Gaultieri thanked the ecologist in his thesis. Montefalcone’s husband said she passed her love of the ocean on to their daughter.

In Omegna, a small city northeast of Turin, Luca Longo, a priest for the local parish, said in a phone interview that he had visited Gaultieri not long before the trip.

“He was looking to his future,” he said. “He wanted to stand out for his research.”