MALE: The last two bodies of Italian divers killed in a scuba diving accident in the Maldives have been recovered, the media office of the Maldives president said on Wednesday, completing recovery efforts after the island nation's deadliest diving tragedy.
The divers were part of a group of five who entered a deepwater cave for exploration last week, after being granted the necessary permit to research soft corals in the Devana Kandu site. Maldivian authorities are investigating multiple possible causes behind their death, including whether the group descended far deeper than expected.
"Both remaining divers recovered from the cave and brought to the surface," an official at the media office said on Wednesday. All bodies had been moved to a mortuary in the capital Male, the official added.
The group was led by Monica Montefalcone, 51, a University of Genoa professor and marine ecologist who was a regular diver in Maldivian waters in the Indian Ocean, and also included her daughter.
The body of the group's instructor was recovered on Friday, and the remains of two other divers were retrieved on Tuesday after a specialist team from Finland was roped in to help with efforts.
A Maldives National Defence Force diver taking part in the search also died from decompression illness as divers tried to locate the bodies on Saturday.
The bodies were located on Monday as searches resumed after a suspension following the death of a local military diver during a perilous retrieval attempt. The bodies were at a depth of around 60 meters (200 feet), twice as deep as the legal depth for recreational diving in the island nation.
Five Italian divers went missing on Thursday. The body of the Italian diving instructor was recovered earlier outside the cave. The two remaining bodies are expected to be recovered on Wednesday.
The Maldives government has said Finnish divers doing the recovery work spotted the bodies in the cave's innermost area. Government spokesperson Ahmed Shaam said the four bodies were found "pretty much together."
The five Italians had been exploring a cave in Vaavu Atoll. Initial teams had dived to identify and mark the entrance system where they disappeared.
The cave has been dived in the past by local experts and foreign divers, presidential spokesperson Mohamed Hussain Shareef told The Associated Press.
While the divers had a permit, authorities didn't know from their proposal the exact location of the cave they were exploring, and at least two of the dead were not on the list of researchers that had been submitted, "so we didn't know they were part of the expedition," Shareef said.
"Actually a very challenging dive, you know," he added. "Number one, because of the depth, number two, because of actual terrain, because that specific channel has strong currents, strong downdrafts down toward, and the conditions down there, the visibility, for example, once you enter the cave would be almost zero."