CHILLING footage of the Maldives divers’ final moments could finally reveal how the tragedy unfolded after rescue workers recovered bodycams from their remains.
All five bodies of the Italian tourists who were killed during a dangerous cave dive in the Maldives last week have now been retrieved from the shark-infested waters off the paradise atoll in the Indian Ocean.
Three expert Finnish divers who recovered four of the bodies this week have handed local authorities GoPro cameras that belonged to the tragic tourists on Wednesday.
These key pieces of evidence will help investigators piece together the Italians’ last moments.
Giorgia Sommacal, 22, and Muriel Oddenino, 31, were recovered from inside the “shark cave” on Wednesday by the Finnish divers.
Both bodies of the divers were lifted onto a support boat one at a time after being carried up to the surface by recovery teams.
The elite divers racing against time to save bodies from sharks in Maldives caves
The expedition team may have been sucked into the complex cave where they ran out of breathing gas trying to escape, a new theory suggests.
A very strong current caused by the cave’s narrow pathway may have created a “Venturi effect” where the water speeds up to maintain a constant flow, causing a pressure drop and creating a vacuum.
Alfonso Bolognini, president of the Italian Society of Underwater and Hyperbaric Medicine, told Italian outlet Adnkronos: “Two things could have happened after the suction.
“Either everyone was sucked in, or one was sucked in and the others attempted a rescue.”
On Tuesday, the bodies of Monica Montefalcone – the mum of Giorgia – and university researcher Federico Gualtieri were recovered.
Boat captain and seasoned diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti was the first body found last week by rescue teams.
The Piazzale Clodio prosecutors will order autopsies on all the bodies as soon as they return to Malé, Italy.
All five bodies have been the subject of intense searches almost 200ft below the surface by an elite task force of divers.
Sami Paakkarinen, Jenni Westerlund, and Patrik Grönqvist, have worked on some of the world’s most difficult underwater recovery missions.
Each attempt to dive and retrieve the bodies lasts around three hours – and it is immediately aborted if any obstacles are encountered.
Search efforts had been hampered by bad weather over the weekend meaning the divers couldn’t risk looking for the missing team.
One of the only attempts on Saturday saw a member of the Maldivian military rescue diver Mohamed Mahudhee die from decompression illness.
He bravely went down to search for the victims but as he rose back to the surface he became gravely ill and later passed away.
The total death toll of the initial tragic dive and the subsequent recovery operation now stands at six.
All of the victims were highly experienced with officials still trying to piece together their deadly dive.
Monica’s husband and Giorgia’s father, Carlo Sommacal hailed his wife as being “among the best divers on the face of the earth“.
He told Repubblica Monica “would never have put our daughter’s life at risk”.
He said: “If there really was a yellow alert, they would have dived first and something must have happened down there.
“Maybe one of them ran into trouble, maybe the gas tanks, I have no idea. But I’m ready to swear anything about Monica’s behavior.”
It comes as the Rome Prosecutor’s Office has launched a manslaughter probe into the divers’ deaths.
The Duke of York yacht, from which the group launched the expedition, also didn’t have a permit allowing dives of more than 100ft.
The Italian tour operator that managed the diving trip denied authorising or knowing the expedition exceeded local limits, its lawyer told Corriere della Sera.
A former military diver claimed that “rules were broken” in the high-risk cave – questioning why the group were allowed on the mission in the first place.
Shafraz Naeem, a Maldivian diving veteran who has explored the Devana Kandu cave system over 30 times, said the entrance to the cave is about 55 metres deep.
“It is incredibly dangerous to conduct dives at these depths on compressed air,” Naeem told the Daily Mail.
