Bodies of missing divers found in Maldives after huge search that lasted days
The bodies of four missing Italian scuba divers who died in an accident in underwater caves have now been recovered.
The incident occurred in the Vaavu Atoll, where the group had been attempting to explore a series of underwater caves at a depth of around 165ft (50m), the Italian Foreign Ministry statement said.
The team of Finnish divers worked for three hours in a specialist operation to recover the bodies.
A statement by the DAN Europe divers' network said: "This marks an important milestone in an operation that remains technically demanding, emotionally challenging, and operationally complex."
The Finnish team arrived on Sunday after the incident in the Vaavu Atoll.
Authorities are investigating procedures ahead of the dive, Mohamed Hussain Shareef, chief spokesman of the President's Office of the Maldives, told reporters.
The body of a fifth Italian diver was recovered on Friday at a depth of about 195 feet inside a cave structure, the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) said last week, adding it assumed the others would also be in the cave, which is about 200 feet long.
An MNDF diver taking part in the search died on Saturday from decompression illness, prompting authorities to temporarily suspend the recovery effort, which has been taking place in rough weather and sea conditions.
The victims from the Italian group have been identified as associate professor of ecology at the University of Genoa Monica Montefalcone, her daughter, Giorgia Sommacal; marine biologist Federico Gualtieri; researcher Muriel Oddenino; and diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti.
The local military diver has been named as Mohamed Mahudhee.
Mr Mahudhee was buried with military honours in a funeral on Saturday night, with Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu in attendance.
Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani offered his condolences to Mr Mahudhee and said the Italian Government was doing everything it could to bring the bodies home.
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The cave system where the incident took place consists of three large chambers connected by small passages, overhangs, swim-throughs and tunnels with poor visibility.
A distress call was sent around 1.45pm, with the team reported missing after they failed to resurface.
Divemaster Maurizio Uras has suggested oxygen toxicity, also known as hyperoxia, inside the cave might have contributed to the incident.
He told Italian media: "It’s a phenomenon that can happen when you dive very deep...If the oxygen mix is inadequate, oxygen can become toxic at certain depths."
He continued: "Weather conditions are also an important factor, and we have to consider that the Indian Ocean is not the Mediterranean, which is relatively calm.
"There (in the Indian Ocean), there are strong currents which I imagine can pull from one side to the other. A real danger."
Director of Pulmonology at the University Hospital of Verona, Claudio Micheletto, said hyperoxia is one of the deadliest complications that can occur during dives.
He said: "Death from oxygen toxicity, or hyperoxia, is one of the most dramatic deaths that can occur during a dive – a horrible end... When you breathe in too high a concentration of oxygen, the gas becomes toxic to the body."
President of the Italian Society of Underwater and Hyperbaric Medicine, Alfonso Bolognini, added: "Inside a cave at a depth of 50m, all it takes is a problem for a diver or a panic attack for a diver."
He said the agitation will cause the water to "become cloudy and can impair visibility", which, in turn, can lead to “fatal errors".
However, Mr Bolognini added it was not easy to conclude what exactly may have happened at the bottom of the sea.
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