A missing GoPro could hold vital clues for the families of the scuba divers who died in the Maldives after a cave dive last week.
Five Italian tourists were confirmed dead on Thursday after disappearing in the waters of Vaavu Atoll during a dive.
Muriel Oddenino, Gianluca Benedetti and Federico Gualtieri, along with Monica Montefalcone and her 20-year-old daughter, Giorgia Sommacal, did not return to the surface.
Sergeant Major Mohammed Mahudhee also died during efforts to locate the tourists’ bodies.
Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu said in a statement: “The death of a diver of the Maldives National Defense Force while diving in search of missing tourists is a matter of deep sorrow for me and for every Maldivian citizen. This is heartbreaking news.”
For now, the recovery operation has been put on hold while officials wait for three expert divers from Finland to arrive.
Carlo Sommacal, Montefalcone’s husband, told La Repubblica that his wife was highly experienced, saying she had completed around 5,000 dives.
“She knows what to do even in times of difficulty,” he said.
He added that she often brought a GoPro with her underwater, and that the device—if it was used on the day of the incident—could help explain what went wrong.
“I don’t know if she had one the other day. If they find it, maybe from there we can understand what happened,” he told La Repubblica.
Four of those who died were connected to the University of Genoa, and had been taking part in a diving expedition in the tourist hotspot.
In a statement, the university said: “The University of Genoa expresses its deep sorrow for the sudden and tragic death of Monica Montefalcone, associate professor of Ecology at the Department of Earth, Environmental and Life Sciences – DISTAV, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, a UniGe student in Biomedical Engineering, Muriel Oddenino, a research fellow at DISTAV, and Federico Gualtieri, a recent UniGe graduate in Marine Biology and Ecology.
“The sympathy of the entire university community goes out to the families, colleagues and students who shared their human and professional journey.”
British Cave Rescue Council diving officer John Volanthen also spoke to CNN about the scale of the cave system, saying the depth is ‘unquestionably hampering’ the recovery.
“It’s essentially a very long way into the cave and normally, cave divers would lay a guideline to find their way out,” the expert said.
“That’s potentially what happened with the missing party.”