The first images from the underwater cave where five Italian divers lost their lives have now been released, as four of the bodies were flown back to Milan on Saturday to support an ongoing manslaughter inquiry by Italian prosecutors.
The photographs were captured by one of the specialist Finnish divers brought in for the recovery operation, which intensified after a member of the Maldives National Defense Forces search-and-rescue team died during a dive.
The five Italians disappeared on May 14 while exploring a cave around 164 feet below the surface in Vaavu Atoll, in an incident described by officials as the most serious diving tragedy in the Maldives’ history. Finnish diver Sami Paakkarinen, part of the retrieval team, said the divers were only about 15 minutes from reaching open water when they died, and alleged they lacked key life-saving equipment.
“Unfortunately, in most cave diving accidents, the main cause is always human error,” Paakkarinen said.
Rome prosecutors have opened a culpable homicide investigation focusing on how the experienced group ended up below the Maldives’ legal recreational diving limit of 100 feet without the required qualifications, authorisations, or gear.
The initial set of pictures, taken close to the cave entrance, shows that daylight still penetrates the opening. This is also the area where instructor and boat captain Gianluca Benedetti was located on the day of the incident, separated from the others.
Investigators believe Benedetti tried to make his way out, but ran out of air and died near the cave mouth.
However, images taken farther inside the cave show a much harsher environment. Visibility drops sharply, and even minor fin movement in the confined passages can lift sediment from the seabed and quickly turn the water opaque.
It is in these deeper sections that the divers are thought to have lost their bearings before exhausting their air supply.
Paakkarinen said the group did not appear to have the appropriate cave-diving setup—most notably, they were not using a diving reel or guideline, a standard safety measure for moving through submerged cave networks.
“The equipment we found them with wasn’t optimal, they weren’t using underwater caving gear,” he said.
“In general, for those who visit caves, it’s known that it’s not very wise to do so without a safety line.”
Without a guideline, a diver who becomes disoriented in a cave has little chance of reliably finding the route back to open water, particularly once silt reduces visibility to near zero.
The cave system consists of three main chambers linked by narrow connecting tunnels. Investigators think the group may have inadvertently entered a dead-end corridor—where four of the five bodies were ultimately found together about 200 feet below the surface.
Officials have also pointed to the dive vessel’s authorisation limits. The boat had approval only for dives up to 30 metres, and visitors were reportedly informed of that restriction on arrival—yet the group went to almost twice that depth.
The Italian tour company that sold the yacht trips said the operator “did not know” the group intended to exceed the recreational ceiling and “would never have allowed it.”
Maldivian authorities have since suspended the Duke of York liveaboard’s operating licence indefinitely while the investigation continues.