Final Italian Bodies Recovered from Maldives 'Shark Cave'

Four of the divers were affiliated with the University of Genoa, but the institution said it had not approved any deep-sea dive as part of their research mission. According to a university spokesperson, the requests submitted to Maldivian authorities 'were evidently made outside the scope' of the authorised research, and the dive was carried out in a 'personal capacity.' Maldives presidential spokesperson Mohameed Hussain Shareef added that at least two of the deceased had not been listed on the official research roster, meaning local authorities were unaware they were part of the expedition. A yellow weather warning had been issued for boats and fishermen on the day of the dive, and officials described conditions inside the cave as 'challenging,' with difficult terrain, strong currents, and poor visibility.

The recovery was carried out by technical divers deployed by Divers' Alert Network Europe, who used closed-circuit rebreathers — systems that recycle exhaled gas and remove carbon dioxide chemically — to allow significantly longer dives in the cave's confined, low-visibility chambers. The mission had been temporarily suspended after a Maldivian military diver, Mohamed Mahdi, died on the previous Saturday during an earlier retrieval attempt; officials attributed his death to decompression sickness, though investigators are still confirming the cause. The bodies will be repatriated to Italy in coordination with the Italian government, while Maldivian authorities continue to investigate whether the group took adequate precautions before entering one of the deepest and most dangerous cave systems in the archipelago.