The Italian divers who died during a cave dive in the Maldives may have taken a wrong passage and become trapped in a dead-end tunnel, according to the head of the organisation that recovered their bodies.
Finnish divers working for Dan Europe found the victims inside a dead-end section of the cave system, about 50 metres below the surface in the Indian Ocean archipelago.
“The bodies were found together in one area of the cave. Based on the layout of the cave, they may have become lost,” Laura Marroni, the company’s chief executive, told AFP.
The Italian group included an experienced marine biology professor, her daughter, two young researchers and their Maldives-based guide. The alarm was raised last Thursday when they failed to return from the dive.
The underwater cave system stretches for hundreds of metres through several chambers and internal passages. It begins with a large, bright cavern with a sandy bottom, where the guide’s body was recovered earlier by Maldivian authorities.
At the end of that cavern is a corridor, almost 30 metres long and three metres wide, leading to a second chamber. Marroni said the passage ends in a sandy area that can make it easy to enter the second chamber but can also reduce visibility when attempting to exit.
She said the divers had very limited air supply and likely only a few minutes at depth, leaving little time to make repeated attempts to find the correct way out. An operation by the Maldives National Defence Force to recover the bodies was abandoned after one of its rescuers died on Saturday from decompression-related complications. The Finnish team was then called in.
Photos and video taken by the Finnish divers during the recovery operation will be shared with Maldivian authorities, who are investigating how the Italians were allowed to descend to a depth of 60 metres. The Maldives sets a maximum depth of 30 metres for tourist dives.
Source: CNA
