World3 min(s) read
Published 11:15 18 May 2026 GMT
Divers find remaining four bodies of missing Maldives tourists
Reports confirm that the bodies of four Italian divers who went missing during a scuba diving expedition in the Maldives have been found.
Italy's foreign ministry provided the update to the BBC, which comes days after another body, belonging to a fifth member of the group, had already been uncovered after the incident on Thursday (May 14).
Who was killed in the underwater accident?
The divers consisted of a University of Genoa research team and another tourist.
Two of the victims were a university ecology professor, Monica Montefalcone, and her 20-year-old daughter Giorgia Sommacal.
The three other divers, two of whom were researchers, have been named as Muriel Oddenino of Turin, Gianluca Benedetti of Padua, and Federico Gualtieri of the northern town of Borgomanero.
Montefalcone was a respected marine biologist and TV personality, while also being a professor of Tropical Marine Ecology and Underwater Science at the University of Genoa.
Montefalcone's husband, Carlo Sommacal, said in a statement that his wife is an "expert" diver and that she is "never reckless," leaving him devastated.
He claimed: "Monica would never have put the lives of her daughter and the other children at risk through recklessness. Something happened down there."
Reports say it was the crew of the Duke of York yacht, a foreign-operated live-aboard diving vessel, that reported the group missing after they failed to surface.
According to the Maldives' military, the other four divers were believed to be in the same cave where they uncovered one of the bodies.
They explained that rescue divers with special equipment had been sent to the area, due to the high-risk nature of the search operation.
Maldivian authorities reported that the weather on Thursday was rough in the area, around 100km (62 miles) south of the capital Malé.
The final words of one of the divers killed in the incident
Not long before the fatal dive, the 51-year-old researcher sent a message to a colleague about the importance of studying marine ecosystems.
“It is fundamental to observe the underwater environment — which remains far too unknown to the general public — whether with our own eyes or through the lens of a robot,” Montefalcone wrote on Wednesday.
Montefalcone, an award-winning scientist from Italy’s University of Genoa, had travelled to the Maldives to study how climate change is affecting tropical biodiversity.
Joining her on the expedition were her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, a university student, and research fellow Muriel Oddenino. Both are believed to have died in the incident.
How was there one survivor?
The reason that one member of a group of Italian tourists who died during a scuba diving trip in the Maldives survived has been shared.
According to Italian outlet liberoquotidiano.it, the unnamed University of Genoa student had fully prepared to dive alongside the rest of the group before suddenly deciding to remain aboard the yacht, the Duke of York, while the others descended around 160 feet into an underwater cave in Vaavu Atoll near Alimatha island.
The woman was described as the “only direct survivor of that day” and is now considered a “key witness for reconstructing the final moments before the accident.”