The Indian Ocean archipelago of the Maldives, one of the world’s most coveted luxury diving destinations, is reeling from its deadliest recorded diving incident after a rescue diver participating in the search for four missing Italian divers died on Saturday, marking the fifth fatality in the tragedy. The chain of events began on May 14, when a group of five Italian divers set out from a liveaboard dive vessel for an excursion off Vaavu Atoll, and failed to surface as scheduled.
By the end of that first day, search teams had recovered only one of the divers’ bodies, leaving four still unaccounted for deep in local waters. When rescue operations entered their third consecutive day on Saturday, Staff Sergeant Mohamed Mahudhy, a diver with the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF), surfaced from his search mission in critical condition. He was rushed immediately to a local medical facility for emergency care, but succumbed to his condition shortly after arrival, the MNDF confirmed in an official public statement.
The victims of the initial incident have been identified by Italy’s University of Genoa: a senior marine biology professor, her daughter, and two early-career researchers from the institution. Italy’s foreign ministry has already formally confirmed that all five Italian divers involved in the outing are dead. The one recovered body was found trapped in an underwater cave at 60 meters – double the maximum permitted diving depth of 30 meters set by Maldivian safety regulations. Government officials have launched a full formal investigation to determine why the group exceeded this official depth limit, and what broader safety failures contributed to the disaster.
Hours before the rescue diver’s death was announced, Maldivian tourism authorities took immediate regulatory action: they suspended the operating license of the MV Duke of York, the 36-meter luxury liveaboard that hosted the Italian expedition, indefinitely. The suspension will remain in place until the full investigation into the incident concludes. The vessel, which is designed to host up to 25 passengers on multi-day diving itineraries, is a popular option for divers exploring the Maldives’ remote coral atolls.
Made up of more than 1,100 low-lying coral islands spread across 800 kilometers of the Indian Ocean along the equator, the Maldives has built its $3 billion tourism industry around its reputation for pristine reefs and world-class diving. While water sports and diving-related fatalities are statistically rare in the South Asian nation, a small number of deadly diving incidents have been recorded over the past five years. This current disaster is the deadliest diving accident in the country’s modern tourism history, and is already prompting scrutiny of safety protocols for liveaboard dive operations across the archipelago.