In May 2026, five Italian divers died inside a sea cave in the Maldives, and a Maldivian Coast Guard diver died taking part in the response. The nine-day international operation that followed is one of the clearest recent illustrations of why deep cave recovery is a specialist discipline, and why it cannot be improvised.
What happened at Dhekunu Kandu
On 14 May 2026, a group from a University of Genoa research expedition entered the Dhekunu Kandu cave off Thinadhoo, Vaavu Atoll, roughly 60 miles from Malé. They dived from the liveaboard MV Duke of York at around 11:00, on a plan of approximately one hour. When they had not resurfaced by 12:00 the vessel began its own search, and Maldivian authorities were notified at 13:30.
The cave’s first chamber lies at 55–58 metres, linked by a short tunnel to a second, much larger chamber. That second chamber held a dead-end tunnel that did not appear on any dive map. All five divers were ultimately found at around 60 metres.
Why the recovery took nine days
Depth alone does not explain it. Several factors compounded each other, and every one of them is familiar to teams working beyond recreational limits:
- An unmapped passage. The tunnel the divers entered was not on the survey. Nobody arriving to help knew the cave’s true shape.
- No guideline. No continuous line marked the route back to the exit — the single most important safeguard in overhead environments.
- Gas and thermal planning. The divers carried standard compressed air. At the depth they were found, that supply allows only minutes, while a safe ascent from such a dive would require many hours of decompression. Thermal protection was light for the exposure involved.
- Conditions. Strong and unpredictable currents, constricted passages opening into a large chamber, and total darkness. Recovery work was also paused at one point by the presence of a tiger shark.
The response became a multinational effort involving Maldivian authorities, Italian authorities and DAN Europe, with Finnish technical divers — among them veterans of the 2014 Pluragrotta recovery — and specialist equipment contributed internationally. The first two bodies were brought out of the unmapped tunnel on 19 May and passed to Maldivian divers at around 30 metres for the final stage to the surface; the remaining two were recovered on 20 May.
The cost of responding
Sergeant Major Mohamed Mahudhee of the MNDF Coast Guard became ill during an ascent in the early phase of the operation and died of decompression sickness. His death is the part of this story that deserves the most attention. Search and recovery is not an extension of the accident — it is a second operation, with its own risk profile, and it has to be planned as one. Responders working past their equipment, training or gas envelope do not shorten a recovery; they add to it.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella later awarded the Order of Merit to the three Finnish divers, and President Mohamed Muizzu honoured the Maldivian personnel involved.
What it means for deep search and recovery
Recoveries of this kind sit at the intersection of technical diving, forensic practice and interagency coordination. Bodies at 60 metres in an overhead environment cannot be reached by conventional dive teams, and they cannot be reached safely by willing volunteers. They require divers qualified for the depth and the environment, a mapped and lined route, appropriate breathing gas, a decompression plan built for the actual profile, and a chain of custody that preserves evidence for the investigation that follows.
This is the work ISRT Missing Persons exists to do. Our deep subsea operations team works in complex maritime environments beyond 100 metres, on request of governmental organisations and under the direction of the authorities involved — combining survey and recovery capability, subaquatic forensics and cave rescue experience in a single deployable team.
The Maldives has since suspended the vessel’s operating licence and drafted stricter rules for technical and enclosed-environment diving beyond 30 metres. Investigations are ongoing in both the Maldives and Italy.
Our thoughts are with the families of all six who died.
CNN’s account of the dive and the search is here: Five cave divers slipped beneath the waves in the Maldives. Why didn’t they resurface? (CNN, 20 May 2026).
If your organisation needs support with a deep or enclosed-environment search and recovery operation, contact ISRT Missing Persons.