Military diver dies searching for bodies of Italian tourists in Maldives cave

Staff Sergeant Mohamed Mahdhee (right), pictured at the start of the search and rescue operation. Photo / Unpixs

A military diver has died while searching for the bodies of a group of Italian tourists who drowned during a scuba expedition in the Maldives.

Staff Sergeant Mohamed Mahudhee was taken to hospital in critical condition after suffering underwater decompression sickness but later died, Maldivian authorities said.

Five experienced Italian divers became trapped in a sea cave at a depth of about 50-60m off the island of Alimathaa in an atoll called Vaavu. They had arrived at the dive site on board a boat called the Duke of York, which runs dive trips in the Maldives.

One body has been recovered, but the remaining four are still inside the underwater cave system.

Mahudhee was one of eight divers searching for the bodies in a “high-risk” recovery operation involving air support.

When the other military divers surfaced, they realised Mahudhee had not emerged. The divers immediately went underwater again and found him unconscious.

Decompression sickness, also known as “the bends”, most commonly occurs from surfacing too quickly after a deep dive.

Under high underwater pressure, nitrogen breathed in by a diver dissolves into the blood and body tissues. If a diver ascends too fast, the nitrogen forms bubbles, which can be fatal.

Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu said: “The death of a diver of the Maldives National Defence Force while diving in search of missing tourists is a matter of deep sorrow for me and for every Maldivian citizen. This is heartbreaking news.”

Bringing the victims home

Rough weather has hampered search efforts. The operation was suspended on Friday before restarting on Saturday (local times).

Maldives presidential spokesman Mohammed Hussain Shareef said: “The death goes to show the difficulty of the mission.”

Antonio Tajani, the Italian Foreign Minister, said everything possible would be done to bring the victims home. His ministry stated it was co-ordinating with Divers Alert Network, a specialist diving organisation, to support recovery operations and the repatriation of the bodies. The cause of the deaths remains under investigation.

The victims have been named: Monica Montefalcone, 51, a professor of marine biology from Genoa University; her daughter, Giorgia Sommacal, 23, a biomedical engineering student; Muriel Oddenino, a marine researcher; Federico Gualtieri, a marine ecologist; and Gianluca Benedetti, a boats operations manager and a diving instructor who had lived in the Maldives for about seven years.

Benedetti’s body was found near the mouth of a cave shortly after recovery operations began.

Rescuers believe the bodies of the other four divers are inside the same cave, which is divided into three large chambers connected by narrow passages.

Divers searched two of the three chambers before suspending the operation on Friday (local time). Efforts to explore the third chamber began the next day.

The group was experienced and the cause of the deaths is unknown, but there has been speculation that there could have been a mix-up in the gas blend inside their dive cylinders.

Recreational divers operating at modest depths have their tanks filled with atmospheric air, which consists of 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen.

The composition of gases in a dive tank must be precisely calculated, depending on the duration and depth of the dive.

The maximum depth for recreational diving is 40m, but if the diver goes deeper, the nitrogen becomes narcotic.

Alternatively, the divers could have become disoriented and lost inside the cave system that extends for 260m, according to one report.

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