Top divers race to recover Maldives tourists' bodies from shark-infested waters

An elite rescue team has reached the Maldives after a military diver died while trying to recover four bodies trapped 200 feet underwater. The divers' association warned that the bodies must be retrieved quickly before sharks and harsh underwater conditions further complicate the mission.

In Short

• Finnish specialist divers joined DAN Europe's team after arriving in Male
• Bad weather and limited technical gear in Maldives slowed recovery efforts
• Military rescue diver Mohamed Mahudhee died hours before the new mission

A team of elite divers from Europe has gathered in the Maldives and is racing against time to recover the bodies of four remaining Italian divers from what became one of the deadliest diving incidents in the country last week. So far, only one body has been recovered from an underwater cave at a depth of 197 feet, while rough weather continues to hamper efforts to retrieve the others.

The new team, assembled and dispatched by Divers Alert Network (DAN) Europe, arrived in Male on Sunday, hours after the Maldivian military rescue diver, involved in the race to retrieve the four bodies, also died during what became his final mission.

DAN Europe chief executive Laura Marroni said the bodies had to be recovered quickly and could not be left exposed to sharks. She added that specialist divers were required because the group had disappeared at a depth of 200 feet inside a network of underwater caves, The New York Post reported.

The recovery team includes three divers from Finland along with two others. According to Marroni, some members had earlier worked on a 2014 rescue operation in Norway, while others were part of the 2018 mission to save a Thai youth football team trapped inside a cave.

She said the group had decades of experience and described the Finnish divers as the best and most experienced personnel immediately available, adding that they were among the world’s most capable specialists for such operations. The rescuers have also previously worked at depths of nearly 500 feet.

Marroni said time was critical. She warned that in warm waters, even though the exact fauna inside the cave remained unknown, risks from predators such as sharks and from environmental conditions could not be ruled out.

She added that past recovery missions had shown how quickly situations could deteriorate and stressed that every passing hour mattered.

The operation has also been delayed by recent bad weather and by a shortage of technical equipment in the Maldives. Marroni said the country was not known for deep-sea or cave diving, and that there was limited training and organisation for a recovery effort of this kind.

Sergeant Major Mohamed Mahudhee, the rescuer who died, had been filmed on Friday standing beside Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu as plans were being discussed for the mission on which he later lost his life.

The five dead tourists were Monica Montefalcone, 52, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, 20, Muriel Oddenino, 31, Gianluca Benedetti, 44, and Federico Gualtieri, 31. All were Italian. All but one were from the University of Genoa in northern Italy. One member of the group survived after deciding at the last moment not to enter the water at Vaavu Atoll. Saturday's search ended without any more bodies being recovered, with only Benedetti's remains having been confirmed.

It is feared that oxygen toxicity, described as an overload of oxygen in the body that can be triggered by a deep dive, may have caused the deaths. Italy has opened its own investigation into the incident, which happened on board the tourist yacht Duke of York.

The vessel, carrying around 25 passengers at the time, did not have a permit for dives below 100 feet. Tour operator Albatros Top Boat has said no dive beyond that depth had been authorised. The company's lawyer, Orietta Stella, who is also an experienced diver, is travelling to the Maldives to oversee the recovery effort and said she wanted to understand what had happened and follow the retrieval of the bodies.

With the search due to resume, the focus remains on recovering the four bodies still missing, after a mission that has already claimed the life of a Maldivian rescuer and drawn scrutiny over the circumstances of the deep dive.

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