Last words of Italian marine biologist who died in Maldives scuba dive tragedy revealed
The last words of one of the marine biologists who died in a scuba diving accident in the Maldives were a tribute to the lifelong passion that ultimately cost her life.
Monica Montefalcone was among the five Italians vanished during a deep-water dive and presumed trapped inside a cave 200 feet underwater in the Indian Ocean island nation Thursday — in what officials called the single worst diving accident the idyllic nation has ever seen.
“It is fundamental to observe the underwater environment — which remains far too unknown to the general public — whether with our own eyes or through the lens of a robot,” Montefalcone wrote to a colleague Wednesday night around 10:15 pm, a few hours before the fatal dive.
Montefalcone, 51, an award-winning researcher from the University of Genoa in Italy, was on a work trip to the Maldives to monitor the effects of climate change on tropical biodiversity.
An experienced diver, she travelled with her daughter, Giorgia Sommacal, 22, a student at the university, and research fellow Muriel Oddenino, 31 — who both died in the dive.
“The only certainty I have is that my wife is among the best divers on the face of the earth,” Montefalcone’s husband Carlo Sommacal told La Republica. “She’s never been a reckless person.”
“She would have never jeopardized the life of our daughter or any other young people.”
The others were Federico Gualtieri, 31, a marine biology master’s graduate from the university, who wrote his thesis on coral diversity in the Maldives, and diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti, 44, a former banker who moved to the Maldives eight years ago to pursue his passion to dive.
Only one body, that of Benedetti’s, has been recovered inside the cave near the Vaavu Atoll. Rescuers found him around 6:15 p.m. Thursday, before they had to come up, and the weather turned, halting the search.
The other four bodies are believed to be inside the cave, according to local authorities. The weather was too bad Friday to dive, and the search is scheduled to resume Saturday.
“It’s a particularly complex dive because the cave is divided into three separate, interconnected segments,” said Italian Ambassador Damiano Francovigh. “The Maldivian divers were only able to enter the first two, then had to come up to allow time for decompression.”
The divers were all experienced, adding to the mystery of what caused them to vanish underwater.
The morning of the dive the Maldives National Defence Force issued a yellow level two alert — warning of increasingly “strong winds” and “rough seas” caused by an intensifying monsoon, urging special caution to divers and advising vessels to avoid unnecessary travel.
“If there really was a yellow alert in effect, they must have gone diving beforehand, and something must have happened down there,” said Sommacal.
He said Montefalcone, who had more than 5,000 dives under her belt, usually dived with a GoPro and thinks recovering it, along with his wife’s body, might provide clues as to what happened.
The university was quick to distance itself from the tragedy, saying that though researchers were there on a scientific mission, the fatal dive wasn’t part of it.
“The scuba diving activity was in no way part of the activities envisaged by the scientific mission but was carried out in a personal capacity” the university said in a statement Friday.
The cave is about 200 feet long and 160 feet below the surface — double the Maldives’ recreational diving depth limit of 100 feet — meaning the divers likely had a technical diving certification and specialized decompression equipment.
The five divers had gone out for an 11 a.m. dive that was supposed to last an hour and never resurfaced.
The crew looked for them with the boat, before calling the Coast Guard at 1:45 p.m., who dispatched a search team.
In December, another experienced diver died in the Maldives. Elaine Richmond, 70, from the United Kingdom, drowned after being pulled into a “strong current” off the island resort of Ellaidhoo, the coroner said.
