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 that recovered their bodies said Thursday.

Finnish divers working for DAN Europe found the Italians in a corridor with a dead end inside the cave complex, which sits about 165 feet underwater, Italy’s la Repubblica daily reported.

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

The Italian divers were identified as Monica Montefalcone, an associate ecology professor at the University of Genoa; her daughter Giorgia Sommacal; marine biologist Federico Gualtieri; researcher Muriel Oddenino; and diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti. A Maldivian military diver also died while searching for the missing Italians.

Montefalcone and Oddenino were in the Maldives on an official scientific mission to monitor marine environments and study the effects of climate change on tropical biodiversity, the University of Genoa said in a statement Friday.

The Finnish divers found the cave near Alimatha begins with a large, very bright cavern with a sandy bottom, 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 30 meters long and 3 meters 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 meters 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,” Marroni said.

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

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

“Realizing 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.

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Red Crescent emergency responders and police personnel transfer the bodies of Italian tourists from a police speed boat to an ambulance in Male on May 19, 2026. Mohamed Afrah /AFP via Getty Images

According to Italy’s foreign ministry, 25 Italian tourists were on board the “Duke of York” yacht, including the five divers who died.

Divers exceeded recommended limits

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

Cave diving is a highly technical and dangerous activity that requires specialized training, equipment and strict safety protocols. Risks increase sharply in environments where divers cannot head straight up and at depth, particularly when conditions are poor. Experts say it’s easy to become disoriented or lost inside caves, particularly as sediment clouds can sharply reduce visibility.

Local officials called the incident the worst single diving accident in the history of the Maldives, a nation of 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered some 500 miles across the equator in the Indian Ocean.

Diving and water sport-related accidents appear to be relatively rare in the South Asian nation, although several fatal incidents have been reported in recent years.

A British female tourist died while diving in December, and her distraught 71-year-old husband died a few days later after falling ill.

A 26-year-old Japanese tourist went missing after a diving expedition near the capital in June.

Local media reports said at least 112 tourists had died in marine-related incidents in the archipelago in the past six years, with 42 of them falling victim to diving or snorkeling accidents.