The first pictures of the underwater cave where five Italian divers died have been made public as four of their bodies were repatriated to Milan Saturday for Italian prosecutors to advance their manslaughter investigation.
The photos were taken by one of the elite Finnish divers called in to recover the remaining victims, after the Maldives National Defense Forces’ search killed one of their own rescuers.
The five Italians vanished during a deep-water dive inside a cave 164 feet underwater in Vaavu Atoll, in what officials called the worst diving accident in the island nation’s history.
Sami Paakkarinen, one the three-person recovery dive team, captured the striking images during his squad’s final dive Thursday, one day after the last two bodies were pulled from the cave.
The first series of images were taken near the cave entrance, where the sunlight still lights the way.
That’s where diving instructor and boat captain Gianluca Benedetti was found, away from the rest of the group, May 14, the day of the tragedy.
But in a second set of photos inside the cave, visibility is clearly reduced.
That’s where the group is believed to have become disoriented, eventually running out of air, according to one of the Finnish divers.
In the deeper chambers, a small kick of the fins as the divers try to move inside the tight space is enough to stir up sediment from the ocean floor, clouding the view.
Benedetti is believed to have tried to find his way out of the cave, before he ran out of air and died near its entrance.
The prosecutor’s office in Rome has opened a culpable homicide investigation into why a group of experienced divers descended below the Maldives’ legal recreational diving limit of 100 feet without the required training, permits or equipment.
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