Reuters
source: reuters
Maldivian authorities are investigating multiple possible factors behind the deaths of five Italian divers in a deepwater cave last week, including whether they descended far deeper than expected, a government spokesperson told Reuters.
The group that entered the cave on Thursday was led by Monica Montefalcone, 51, a University of Genoa professor and marine ecologist who was a regular diver in Maldivian waters in the Indian Ocean. Her daughter was among the four researchers who died, along with an instructor. The instructor’s body is the only one that has been recovered so far, from a depth of 60 metres.
It is the deadliest single incident in the country’s diving history.
Mohamed Hussain Shareef, chief spokesperson at the Maldives president’s office, said the government had given the the group the necessary permit to research soft corals in the Devana Kandu site.
“What we didn’t know was that it was cave diving,” Shareef said. “Because, as divers will tell you and appreciate, it’s a very different discipline with its own sets of challenges and risks involved, and particularly at that depth, there are any number of things that could have gone wrong.”
Montefalcone’s husband Carlo Sommacal said in interviews to Italian media that his wife would have never put her daughter or others at risk. He described her as “one of the best divers in the world” who had carried out about 5,000 dives and was “always conscientious” and “never reckless.”
