COULD IT BE?

Dive Tragedy Mystery Takes New Turn With Grim Theory

Experts have floated multiple possible explanations for how five Italian researchers met a watery end earlier this month.

The group of Finnish divers who retrieved the bodies of an Italian research team from an underwater cave in the Maldives believes they may have solved the mystery of how the group died. A member of the team from Finland told Italian press Thursday there’s a possibility the researchers, led by celebrated ecologist Monica Montefalcone, may have taken a wrong turn while trying to make their way out of the underwater complex due to a sandbank “illusion” concealing the real exit. Maldivian investigators announced earlier this week that they were looking into the possibility that Montefalcone’s group may simply have gone deeper into the cave than they had planned for. The researcher’s husband, Carlo Sommacol, whose daughter also died in what’s been described as the deadliest diving accident in the Maldives’ history, has snubbed that theory, insisting his wife would have meticulously planned the dive and that we should never have “recklessly” put the others at risk. Other experts have floated the possibility that the excursion may have been disrupted by poor visibility below water, or by bad weather above.