Final B0dies: Aut0psies on the last two Maldives divers recovered from the tragedy uncovered something unexpected

The bodies of two Italians who drowned in a scuba diving accident in the Maldives last week have been brought to the surface, local officials have told the BBC.

“They were retrieved from the third chamber of the underwater cave by the specialist divers from Finland after a two-hour operation,” Mohamed Hossain Shareef, a Maldivian government spokesperson told the BBC.

The two bodies were being brought to the capital Male for identification.

They were among five people who died in the accident. Two bodies remain inside.

The first body of an Italian diver, who was a member of the group, was recovered shortly after Thursday’s accident near Vaavu atoll. He has been named by Italian media as boat operations manager and diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti.

Then on Saturday a Maldivian rescue diver died during a search for the bodies.

The four missing divers were eventually found by Finnish divers on Monday in the chamber of the cave furthest from the entrance. Known locally as “shark cave”, it is up to 60m (197 ft) deep.

The mission to recover the remaining two bodies will resume on Wednesday and a Maldivian official was hopeful they would be retrieved the same day.

It is hoped that discovering the bodies will provide clues as to the cause of the accident. The recovery operation has been described as complex because of the depth of the cave and the lack of space and visibility. The entrance to the cave lies at a depth of 47m but the various chambers are at varying depths.

The Finnish divers were working with local police and coastguard, and officials said that while the specialist team had brought the two bodies to a depth of 30m, the coastguard divers had taken over the operation from that point.

The weather at the time of the dive on Thursday was described as rough and a yellow warning had been issued for passenger boats and fishermen.

Four of the divers were affiliated with the University of Genoa, which told the BBC that it did not give approval for any kind of deep-sea dive as part of their scientific research.

“The requests submitted to the Maldivian authorities… were evidently made outside the scope of the mission authorised by the university,” a spokesperson said. The dive was carried out “in a personal capacity”, the spokesperson added, and not part of the research.

The university has said that it had suspended authorisation for any dives for scientific purposes – regardless of their depth – in March 2024, in accordance with a ministerial decree from that month giving guidelines for underwater dives.

The statement said the university is currently developing an internal protocol to govern its procedures, in compliance with those regulations.

A Maldivian government spokesperson told the BBC that the team had a permit to dive to a depth of 50m but had not mentioned the cave in their proposal.

The team was led by Monica Montefalcone, who was associate professor of ecology at Genoa University, along with research fellow Muriel Oddenino, who were looking at the effects of climate change on tropical biodiversity.

The other two divers in the cave were Montefalcone’s daughter Giorgia Sommacal, a student at Genoa, and recent graduate Federico Gualtieri.

Sommacal’s father Carlo has been highly critical of the university’s statement that the cave dive led by his wife was unauthorised.

“Monica [Montefalcone], according to many, is the person who has the most scientific literature on those corals in the world,” he told La Repubblica newspaper. “There are hundreds of graduate students writing theses on the Maldives using the data they gather together with Monica, or that Monica gathered. And no one knew anything? It makes me laugh.”