Nick Squires
Rome: Five Italian divers who died in a deep undersea cave in the Maldives lost their way and ended up in a dead end where they ran out of air, investigators believe.
Instead of swimming through a passageway that led back to the open sea, the divers are believed to have taken a wrong turn and entered a pitch-black cave that had no exit.
They may have missed the correct exit because their flippers had stirred up the sandy floor of the cave system, turning the water murky and making it difficult to see the right route.
The coral cavern system they were exploring was at a depth of about 60 metres, meaning there would have been little margin for error.
Experts believe they probably had just 10 to 12 minutes of air available for exploring the caverns. Once they became stuck in the dead end, and as panic set in, it would have quickly run out.
The divers vanished last week after embarking on a dive off the island of Alimathaa in an atoll called Vaavu, south of Malé, the capital of the Maldives.
Their bodies were recovered in a highly technical operation carried out by three expert divers, who were flown in from Finland, during the week.
The Italians descended from their dive boat, entered a first, large underwater cave, and then swam through a 30-metre-long passageway that led to a second cave.
It was there that they ran into trouble. Instead of exploring for a few minutes and retracing their route, they entered a third, smaller cave with no exit. It was there that the Finnish divers found four bodies.
The fifth body, of Gianluca Benedetti, a dive instructor, was found in the first, larger cave. He had either decided to wait there while the others explored the cave system, or had accompanied them all the way in and somehow managed to nearly find his way to safety by himself.
The other divers were Monica Montefalcone, 51, a professor of marine biology from Genoa University, her 23-year-old daughter Giorgia Sommacal, a biomedical engineering student, and Muriel Oddenino and Federico Gualtieri, two young marine biology researchers.
“They most probably lost orientation inside the cave and ran out of air,” Laura Marroni, the chief executive of the Divers Alert Network Europe, told the London Telegraph.
The not-for-profit organisation, which promotes diving safety through research and education, was behind the mission to recover the divers’ bodies. The group posted images on social media on Friday that it said were taken inside the cave.
“There is sand on the cave floor, especially in the second chamber. If you stir it up with your flippers then it creates a sort of cloud that worsens visibility. Maybe that’s why they didn’t see the exit. But right now, we just don’t know,” Marroni said.
“If you get lost in a situation like that, you don’t have a lot of time. With a 12-litre tank, diving at that depth you might have only 10 to 12 minutes of air.
“It depends on how long it took them to get down there. And it can depend on the individual – how hard they breathe. But even a small mistake can lead to a big problem.”
Mohameed Hussain Shareef, a Maldivian government official, described the conditions in the cavern system as “challenging”, with difficult terrain and poor visibility.
Investigators will analyse the dive computers that the Italians wore on their wrists to find out their dive profiles – how much time they spent at different depths.
The loss of the five Italians was compounded by a second tragedy last Saturday when a rescue diver from the Maldivian armed forces died from decompression complications or nitrogen narcosis after descending to the cave system.
The Finnish team was then called in and recovered the bodies on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The rescuers used closed-circuit rebreathers, a system that recycles exhaled breathing gas and removes carbon dioxide through a chemical scrubber, allowing divers to remain underwater for much longer.
One of the Finnish divers, 54-year-old Patrik Gronqvist, said that of the four bodies found in the dead-end cave, three were on the sea bed and one was floating by the roof.
He told the AFP news agency that the mission had not been as “technically challenging” as previous operations he had been involved in, but: “This operation was very sad … I will never forget it.”
The Maldivian authorities are investigating whether the Italians had permission to dive so deep and enter the cave system. The limit for recreational dives is 30 metres. The operating licence of the dive boat on which the five victims had been staying has been suspended.
