Italian divers in Maldives may have got lost in underwater cave: Recovery firm

ROME – Five Italians killed in a Maldives diving incident may have taken the wrong tunnel on their way out of an underwater cave, the head of the company which recovered their bodies said on May 21.

Finnish divers working for Dan Europe found the Italians in a corridor with a dead end inside the cave complex, which sits some 50m underwater, Italy’s la Repubblica daily reported.

“There was no way out from there,” the company’s chief executive Laura Marroni was quoted by la Repubblica as saying.

The Italian divers included a marine biology professor with many years of experience, her daughter, two young researchers and their Maldives-based guide.

The Finnish divers found the cave near Alimatha begins with a first large, very bright cavern with a sandy bottom, Ms Marroni told the newspaper.

At the end of this room is a corridor where there is little light, but “visibility, using artificial lighting, was excellent”, she said.

The corridor is almost 30m long and three metres across and leads to a second chamber of the cave, which is a large, round space with no natural light.

Between the corridor and the second chamber is a sandbank.

It is easy to get over the sandbank into the second chamber, but when you turn around to leave again the bank almost looks like a wall, hiding the corridor, 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,” the paper said.

If they had taken that corridor by mistake, “then it would have been very difficult to return, especially with the limited air supply”, Ms Marroni said.

The divers were using standard tanks, meaning that, at that depth, they had very little time to visit the second cave, she said.

“We’re talking about 10 minutes, maybe even less,” Ms Marroni said.

“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,” she said.

Authorities in the Maldives are investigating how the Italians were allowed to descend to a depth of 60m when the Indian Ocean country permits a maximum depth of 30m for tourists. AFP