Italian victims of scuba diving accident include university professor and her daughter.
Five Italian nationals have died after failing to resurface during an underwater dive in the Maldives, in what local authorities say is the worst single diving accident in the nation’s history.The group departed by boat for their dive in the Vaavu Atoll near the island of Alimathaa on Thursday morning. The vessel’s crew reported them missing at around midday, when they had not yet returned to the surface.
The five divers are believed to have perished while attempting to explore underwater caves at a depth of around 50 metres. The reconstruction of the incident is under way by Maldivian authorities, and the Italian embassy in Sri Lanka is liasing closely.
Search
In a statement on Friday, Italy’s foreign ministry said that rescue boats from the Maldivian Coast Guard had arrived at the scene of the accident and that an experienced Italian diver was assisting police divers in the search which was being hampered by adverse weather conditions.
The Maldives National Defence Force reported that the body of one of the five was found inside a cave, and that the other four are believed to be located in the same cave system, which extends to a depth of around 60 metres and is thought to be around 260 metres long.
Experts have suggested possible causes including a problem with the oxygen mixture in the cylinders, sudden ascending currents or disorientation within the cave system, though no official determination has yet been made. Maldivian media noted that recreational diving in the country is permitted to a maximum depth of 30 metres.
Victims
The five victims have been named as Monica Montefalcone, 51, an associate professor of Ecology at the University of Genoa and a marine environment researcher; her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, 22, a biomedical engineering student at the same university; Muriel Oddenino, 31, a researcher and scientist affiliated with the Genoa university; and two diving instructors, Gianluca Benedetti of Padua and Federico Gualtieri, 31, from Novara.
Benedetti had moved to the Maldives in 2017, working in diving and underwater tourism, and had become operations manager for the tour operator Albatros Top Boat. Gualtieri had graduated from the University of Genoa in March in Marine Biology and Ecology, completing a thesis on the coral ecosystems of the Maldivian central atolls under Professor Montefalcone’s supervision.
The group were aboard the Duke of York, a luxury safari dive boat managed by a foreign-operated company. According to preliminary accounts, the cave dive was not part of the official research programme that had brought Montefalcone and Oddenino to the Maldives, but appeared linked to a scientific-tourist excursion.
Condolences
The University of Genoa issued a statement expressing profound grief at the loss of Montefalcone, Sommacal, Oddenino and Gualtieri, extending condolences to their families and to the entire university community.
Italy’s universities minister Anna Maria Bernini extended her closeness to the families of the victims and to the University of Genoa, stating that the tragedy has “shaken the entire Italian academic community”.
