Fatal accident in the Maldives: Italian diver identified in the Vaavu atoll: he is Gianluca Benedetti

The Maldives National Defence Force recovered Benedetti's lifeless body at 6.13pm local time (3.13pm in Italia). The body was then transferred to the health centre in Fulidhoo, Vaavu Atoll.

Tough weather

The search in the Maldives for the bodies of four Italians who died while diving yesterday should resume tomorrow Saturday, 16 May. Adverse weather conditions have advised a pause.

Also on board the boat 'Duke of York', which carried the compatriots, were 20 other Italians, who participated in the expedition and are well and undergoing psychological support.

The Ambassador of Italia in Colombo (Sri Lanka), responsible for the Maldives, is in Malè.

The local authorities have confirmed the opening of an investigation to clarify the causes of the accident, but no official version of the circumstances of the death of the five Italians has yet been released.

"Descending to those depths breathing air can lead to so-called nitrogen narcosis, which reduces lucidity, dexterity, and cognitive skills necessary to properly manage the dive". Dr Chiara Ferri, Medical Director of Dan Europe, commenting on the diving accident, told LaPresse.

The specialist pointed out that the environmental context would be particularly insidious. "We are talking about caves and environments with a strong presence of sandy sediment. It takes very little to completely lose visibility and no longer be able to identify the point of entry or exit".

Among the hypotheses being considered is that the group may have been disoriented inside the cave. "If one of the divers had fallen ill, or if the group had lost their bearings in an unfamiliar environment, the uplifting of the sediment could have further aggravated the situation," he explained, pointing out, however, that these are only hypotheses at the moment.

On the other hand, the expert considers the trail of contamination of the cylinders to be less likely. "It is not the hypothesis that I personally consider the most plausible," she said, adding that even oxygen toxicity "would not seem to be compatible with the assumed depth parameters".

The Mission

They were in the Maldives for research on behalf of Unige, a trip that the University of Genoa organises every year, researcher Monica Montefalcone and research fellow Muriel Oddenino, two of the victims of yesterday afternoon's massacre.

Also with them, in a personal capacity, were the other three victims, Giorgia Sommacal, daughter of Montefalcone, Gianluca Benedetti and Federico Gualtieri.

Also present in the Maldives, as part of a different research mission, is Unige professor Stefano Vanin, who did not dive.

According to information, Unige's mission did not include diving activities, but only snorkelling. On the boat from which the victims dived were other students from the University of Genoa.

Local authorities in the Maldives said that the one to the five Italians is the worst single diving accident in the nation of 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered some 800 kilometres straddling the equator in the Indian Ocean. This was reported by the CBS.

In December 2025, a British tourist died during a dive, and her husband, a 71-year-old man wracked with grief, died a few days later of an illness.

A 26-year-old Japanese tourist disappeared after scuba diving near the capital in June 2025.

According to local media reports, over the past six years at least 112 tourists have died in marine accidents in the archipelago, of which 42 died in diving or snorkelling accidents.

"I know that cave, it goes down to 65 metres. It is a complex dive and these daysthe passage of the monsoon with strong currents, also accomplice to the long wave, may have affected it further. At that depth every problem becomes difficult to manage, all it takes is for one of the participants to have a moment of panic to drag the others down".

Roberto Fragasso is an experienced diver who has lived in the Maldives for more than 30 years, where he runs the 'Sinai Dive Club' and every day accompanies tourists to the seabed of the atolls: 'Diving at those depths is in any case forbidden by the Maldives, which have imposed a categorical limit of 30 metres of descent'. As a first hypothesis, he also mentions nitrogen narcosis, also citing the monsoon period, with cloudy skies affecting the visibility of the waters, which are very murky.