A Warning Too Late: Before leaving, Monica Montefalcone’s husband told her danger may be coming for them

Five Italians, including a professor and her 20-year-old daughter, died during a scuba diving excursion in the Maldives. An investigation is underway into what went wrong.

Four Italian tourists, all experienced divers, and their instructor set out on a scuba excursion May 14 in the Maldives to explore a sea cave.

None of them survived the journey.

The body of instructor Gianluca Benedetti was recovered later that day from the mouth of a cave in the archipelagic country’s Vaavu Atoll. The four others—Monica Montefalcone and her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, Federico Gualtieri and Muriel Oddenino—were found inside the cave May 18, the culmination of a multi-agency search effort that was postponed May 15 by bad weather and temporarily suspended the next day after a Maldivian military diver died during the recovery mission.

The Maldives National Defense Force confirmed in a statement posted to X that the missing divers were located, with “further dives to be carried out in the coming days to recover the bodies.”

Meanwhile, an investigation is underway to determine what happened to the group, who dove 50 meters (roughly 164 feet) beneath the ocean’s surface—which is 20 meters further down than the recreational diving limit in the Maldives, while anything deeper than 40 meters requires specialized training and equipment.

“For recreational and commercial diving, by law, nobody is allowed to go further than 30 meters,” the Maldives government’s chief spokesperson Mohamed Hussain Shareef said May 18, “and unfortunately, this appears to have happened a lot deeper because even the cave’s mouth is almost 50 meters under.”

The group set out on the 118-foot Duke of York, operated by Italian tour operator Albatros Top Boat. The boat’s license has been suspended pending a “thorough investigation,” the Maldives Ministry of Tourism & Civil Aviation said in a May 17 statement, concluding, “All necessary action will be taken to ensure full accountability, and tourism businesses and service providers will continue to be held to the standards required of them.”

As Shareef told CNN, “Everything will be looked into.”

SOPHIA NASIF/EPA / Shutterstock

According to the Associated Press, an attorney for Albatros told Italy’s Corriere della Sera that the company “did not know” that the divers planned to exceed the 30-meter limit, and “would have never allowed it.”

Lawyer Orietta Stella also said, per the AP, that the group appeared to be using standard recreational diving equipment, rather than technical equipment more suitable for deep sea cave diving. She also noted that, while Albatros marketed the cruise, the company did not own the Duke of York or employ the crew.

E! News reached out to Albatros Top Boat for comment and has yet to hear back.

With the search for answers ongoing, here is what to know about the Maldives diving disaster, which Shareef called the country’s “biggest diving accident ever”:

Who were the Italian divers who died in the Maldives?

Gianluca Benedetti was the diving instructor who led the group of four, all of whom were affiliated with the University of Genoa, on a May 14 excursion to explore a cave in the Maldives’ Vaavu Atoll, which has the island nation’s largest reef.

Monica Montefalcone, an associate professor of ecology, was accompanied by her 20-year-old daughter Giorgia Sommacal, a bioengineering student. Rounding out the group were research fellow Muriel Oddenino and Federico Gualtieri, a recent marine ecology master’s graduate from the university.

They were on a week-long trip with 20 other passengers, all of whom remained on board when the five went diving, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry. Authorities also confirmed that a sixth person, a University of Genoa student, planned to go on the dive but changed her mind as the rest of the group was getting into the water.

Muriel Oddenino/Facebook; Greenpeace via AP; Albatros Top Boat; Federico Gualtieri/Facebook; Instagram

“Something must have happened down there,” Carlo Sommacal, Montefalcone’s husband, told Italian TV channel Rete 4, per the AP. He said his wife was diving in Kenya when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck the coast of the African nation and survived that disaster.

He told La Repubblica, “She’s probably done 5,000 dives, and she’s always been conscientious. She would never have put our daughter’s or other children’s lives at risk.”

Greenpeace Italia said in a statement that the organization would miss Montefalcone’s “professionalism and her advice,” as well as “that special light she had in her eyes when she spoke about the wonders of the sea and the importance of protecting them.”

The University of Genoa said in a statement, “The sympathy of the entire university community goes out to the families, colleagues and students who shared their human and professional journey.”

The school also said, according to Australia’s ABC News, that the group’s fatal dive was “undertaken privately.”

Who was the Maldivian military diver who died during the recovery effort?

Officials confirmed that Maldives National Defense Force Staff Sergeant Mohamed Mahudhee, 43, died May 16 during a second recovery mission into the cave where the bodies were ultimately found.

“He was one of the most senior divers,” government spokesman Shareef told CNN, “which shows just how challenging this dive is.”

Authorities attributed his death to decompression sickness, a sometimes fatal condition commonly known as “the bends,” which is caused by a rapid decrease in barometric pressure around the body. He was taken to ADK Hospital for treatment but died while receiving care.

Maldives National Defense Force

“He was diving in a pair, as per protocol,” Shareef said, “and returning to the surface when his partner realized something was wrong and the rest of the team jumped in to try and save him.”

Mahudhee was laid to rest in the Maldivian capital of Malé on the night of May 16 with full military honors. Hundreds of people joined his family at the funeral, according to Maldives publication The Standard, including President Mohamed Muizzu, Cabinet ministers, senior state officials and military personnel.

MALDIVES PRESIDENT’S MEDIA DIVISION HANDOUT/EPA/Shutterstock

Who found the bodies of the four Italian divers in the Maldives?

Benedetti’s body was found May 14 near the mouth of the cave and Maldives’ Ministry of Tourism & Civil Aviation confirmed May 17 that his body had been recovered.

The Maldives National Defense Force said May 18 that a joint search and recovery operation conducted by the MNDF Coast Guard, in conjunction with Maldives police and a team of experts put together by the Italian government, had located the four missing divers.

According to Shareef, three Finnish divers from scuba safety group Divers Alert Network Europe joined the mission May 17 to help formulate a new strategy, while special equipment was provided by the United Kingdom and Australia.

After the bodies were located, a diver wrote “WE FOUND ALL FOUR” in a logbook and the page was ferried to the surface, according to a post on DAN Europe’s Facebook page.

The dive, which the organization called “technically demanding, emotionally challenging, and operationally complex,” took approximately three hours.

Maldives President’s Media Division via AP

The team used closed-circuit rebreathers, high-performance DPVs (Diver Propulsion Vehicles) and fully redundant life-support configurations to safely pull off “an extended penetration dive in a deep cave environment,” according to a DAN Europe press release.

As the organization’s CEO Laura Marroni explained to ABC News before the mission, “Access to the cave is located at a depth of between 55 and 60 meters, while the underwater system extends for hundreds of meters through multiple chambers and internal passages.”

But, she told La Stampa, “We’ll bring [the bodies] back. We can’t leave them at the mercy of the sharks.”

What happened to the Italian divers who died during a May 14 scuba excursion in the Maldives?

The cause of death for the five divers remains under investigation, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry and Maldives government.

The four missing divers had been found in the deepest part of the sea cave, Shareef said, and divers planned on retrieving two on May 19 and two the next day.

Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told the AP that everything possible would be done to bring the Italians home.

Meanwhile, this is a reminder that the sea can be a dangerous place. See other excursions that ended in tragedy:

Pickles and his parents, Paula Bozinovich and Terry Pickles. | Courtesy

Lake Tahoe Boat Capsizing

In June 2025, a boat crash in Lake Tahoe took the lives of eight individuals, making it the deadliest sea tragedy in California since 2019. The victims included Doordash executive Josh Pickles, as well as his parents Terry Pickles and Paula Bozinovic, and his uncle Peter Bayes, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Division confirmed to ABC 7 San Francisco at the time.

The family had been celebrating the 71st birthday of Pickles’ mother, a rep for the family told the outlet. Timothy O’Leary, James Guck, Theresa Giullari, and Stephen Lindsay were also killed in the crash. There were only two survivors.

AFP via Getty Images

Red Sea Tourist Disaster

A tourist submarine carrying 45 people crashed off in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt in March 2025, killing six Russian tourists, the Egyptian governorate office confirmed to NBC News at the time. Of the 39 people who survived, local officials told the Associated Press that nine were injured, while the remaining 30 were returned to their hotels.

The vessel that crashed was owned by Sinbad Submarines, a tourist agency that offers recreational tours 25 meters below the sea surface for $70 per person. In a statement to Daily News Egypt following the crash, the company said of the six victims, “We sadly join the deceased families in mourning them with profound grief.”

Instagram/Kimberly Burch

Faster Pussycat Member Taime Downe’s Fiancée’s Fatal Cruise Ship Fall

Kimberly Burch, the fiancée of Faster Pussycat member Taime Downe, fell from a Royal Carribean ‘80s-themed cruise ship off the coast of Miami in March 2025, her mother Carnell Burch confirmed to TMZ at the time.

In an interview two months later, Downe alleged that his fiancée’s death was “alcohol and prescription related.”

“It’s a rollercoaster,” Downe told SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk in May 2025 of his grieving process. “I’m hanging in there. I’m just taking it a day at a time.”

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images

Sicily Superyacht Sinking

Amid a freak storm in August 2024, a superyacht off the coast of Sicily containing 10 crew members as well as 12 passengers sank. The six victims of the catastrophe included tech CEO Mike Lynch, his daughter Hannah, New York-based attorney Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, as well as Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy.

Officials later determined that the accident was caused by a “waterspout,” or a tornado that can occur at sea. Salvo Cocina, the head of Sicily’s civil protection agency, told NBC News at the time of the crash that the boat was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

One of the lone survivors of the tragedy Charlotte Golunski—whose young daughter and partner also survived—described the storm to La Repubblica as feeling like “the end of the world.”

Twitter

Titan Submersible Implosion

In June 2023, the disappearance of OceanGate’s Titan submersible, a deep-sea vessel designed to take tourists to the crash site of the Titanic, dominated the news cycle. After a four-day search—during which a tally was kept of the sub’s 96-hour oxygen supply—it was determined that the seacraft had imploded on itself, killing all five of the passengers.

The perished vessel carried OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British businessman Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood as well as Titanic researcher Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Less than a month after the implosion, OceanGate completely shut down its operations. In Implosion: Titanic Sub Disaster, a documentary released nearly two years after the tragedy, events that led to the crash, including a lack of attention to safety protocols by OceanGate, were examined. Additionally, footage from what the Coast Guard believes was the moment of the implosion was released.

In the clip, Rush’s wife Wendy Rush—a director for the submersible tourism company—who was monitoring the voyage from the OceanGate offices, noticed a loud crash as the submersible was set to hit 3,300 meters below sea level. Addressing her colleague Gary Foss, she said, “What was that bang?”

Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images

Naya Rivera’s Drowning

While on a boat trip on California’s Lake Piru with her young son Josey, the Glee star disappeared, launching a lengthy investigation after authorities found her son alone on the boat in the middle of the lake July 8, 2020.

After five days of searching Ventura County Sheriff’s department confirmed that Rivera’s body was found in the lake, floating at its surface. Rivera’s son—whom Rivera shared with ex Ryan Dorsey—shared amid the investigation that the pair had gone swimming in the lake that day and he remembered being helped back into the boat by his mom.

“There are a lot of currents on the lake that appear particularly in the afternoon,” Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub confirmed at a 2020 press conference. “We believe it was mid-afternoon when she disappeared, the idea perhaps being that the boat started drifting, it was unanchored, and that she mustered enough energy to get her son back onto the boat, but not enough to save herself.”