During the efforts to recover the bodies of the four divers whose bodies still haven’t been found, one of the military divers has died of decompression illness. As a result of this latest fatality, the Maldives government is suspending body recovery operations until experts in deep and cave diving can arrive on the scene, perhaps tomorrow.
The woman who was the defacto leader of the group is being called an “expert with over 5,000 dives.”
Ms Montefalcone’s husband, Carlo Sommacal, told Italian outlet La Repubblica that his wife was an “expert” and had done 5,000 dives.
I can’t stress how difficult and dangerous this dive is. As I said in the other post, my experience and certifications are remarkably similar to hers, and I am telling you now that I am not, and she is not, in any way qualified to do that dive, nor was she equipped to perform that dive. I know I am not trained or equipped for it. In addition to being NAUI and PADI certified as a divemaster, rescue diver, nitrox, public safety diver, and cavern certified, I am also SSI certified for extended range diving and extended range nitrox. (the first two classes in this list.)
The reports I am seeing is that her group of 5 divers were diving ordinary open circuit with single aluminum 80 cubic foot tanks. That is not the way to do this, and she should know better. It is my belief that Dunning-Krueger is in full effect here- she was making the assumption that all diving is the same, so diving to double the recreational limit is no big deal, and basing that on her training and experience in shallower depths- perhaps thinking her professorship and TV fame made her smarter than everyone else.
The issue with this latest death, is that the Maldives military is no better. It’s being reported in SCUBA circles that the military diver was in recreational gear with single tank and an extra slung aluminum 80. That is nowhere near good enough. The entrance to that underwater cave is at 160 feet. The caverns that are being searched are at 200+ feet.
- There is no safe limit for diving to that depth that doesn’t require decompression.
- Nitrogen is intoxicating at that depth. This compounds the danger, and requires mixed gases, especially as you approach 180 feet or deeper.
- Oxygen in normal air becomes toxic when breathed at depths greater than 185 feet.
For the reasons above, dives to that depth require what’s called hypoxic trimix, a mix of 10-16% oxygen, 50% helium, and the remainder nitrogen. That mixture avoids the risks of OXTOX, narcosis, and lessens the issues with decompression sickness. The issue is that hypoxic trimix can’t be breathed on the surface or at shallower depths. This means a diver has to have what’s called a transit gas, usually trimix with 21% oxygen, to get from the surface to about 150 feet or so. Then there are decompression gases needed, which can include 50% nitrox or other gases. The exact depth for each gas and when to switch depends on the chosen mix, target oxygen pressure (1.2–1.4 atmospheres), Equivalent Narcotic Depth (END), and the decompression plan. The people who do this always use gas and dive planning software. This isn’t the sort of dive where you just dive in and go for it.
In all, a dive like this could require every single diver to enter the water with 4 or more tanks, and still be required to use a surface supplied decompression gas. In many cases with a dive like this, divers will go in ahead of the search team and bring in full tanks of trimix that are left in staging areas within the cave. It’s a very complex and dangerous operation.
Now multiply that by the number of divers you need- this will include the search team, support divers who don’t enter the cave but assist the search team in managing the dive at depths from 150 feet up to the surface, the divers who penetrate the cave to set up staging tanks, then there is a medical team, and other members.
Each diver who enters that cave will have about 25 minutes to conduct the search, then will spend the next two hours working their way to the surface as they decompress at progressively shallower depths. Total run times of 3+ hours are common, with significant stops on 50% nitrox and pure O₂ required to decompress.
In all, an operation like this will take a dozen or more people and cost over a million dollars.
Or you could just cancel the entire useless exercise and leave the dead where they lie. Why risk creating more bodies? My opinion is leave them where they are. They are already dead, and any potential benefit in recovering the bodies isn’t worth losing yet another life. If the Italian government or the family isn’t happy with that, they can mount the expedition, with the understanding that any other death will result in the supervisor of that dive being charged with negligent homicide.
The ocean is an unforgiving bitch if you don’t show her proper respect.
23 Comments
-rightwingterrorist · May 16, 2026 at 4:16 pm
Perfect job for surface supplied air.
Expensive, but one hell of a lot safer.
Divemedic · May 16, 2026 at 6:14 pm
Air still carries all of the risks of OXTOX, narcosis, etc
-rightwingterrorist · May 17, 2026 at 6:43 am
True enough, but I’m thinking about this through a Commercial Divers lens. With surface supplied air the ship will have decompression chambers on board. With the right equipment and at -150′ you’re getting 1hr bottom time and roughly 1hr decompression per dive. I’ve spent months in a regular rotation making 1-2 dives a day to -150′ doing heavy labor. O.T., I did get a chance once to make a dive to -200′ on straight air. What a riot! Another fun trick when doing the shallower (-150′) dives is to hold your breath while pulling yourself down the downline as fast as you can. That first gulp of thick air on bottom is glorious.
Divemedic · May 17, 2026 at 7:44 am
At 200 feet, the ppo2 of air is 1.48 and the END (edited for clarity- Equivalent Narcotic Depth) is of course 200. Commercial divers dont worry about oxtox or narcosis?
Also, the nearest chamber to the accident is 60 miles away in Mele. That means in water decompression.
-rightwingterrorist · May 17, 2026 at 8:28 am
That particular -200′ dive was an anomaly, and short. It’s been many years but I’m certain that there were in water stops with time spent in the decompression chamber with O2 treatments. I was doing oilfield work, mostly, while I was a Commercial Diver and every boat/ship that I worked on had at least 2 decompression chambers on it. Due to the rapture of the deep and getting bent operations generally worked as such: 0′–180′ was surface supplied air with in water stops coupled with time in the decompression chamber with O2. -180′–250′ (sometimes a little more) were mixed gas dives with an open bell or stage with much longer in water stops and a longer time in the decompression chamber. Saturation diving is a bit different, and that depends on the job. In Saturation I’ve had -40′ to -775′ work. With the holy grail for Saturation Divers being -1000′. Me personally I never got that deep and never did meet anyone who did but they’re out there.
-rightwingterrorist · May 17, 2026 at 8:35 am
Oh and generally you’re under pressure in Saturation for 30 days at a time, my longest stint was 90 and that sucked.
For decompression one generally figured 1 day per 100′ plus a day. I’m old now and have been out of the game for some time so I’m sure that the rules have changed somewhat.
Grumpy51 · May 16, 2026 at 4:19 pm
Good explanation, thanks. OLD FD diver (NAUI, PADI, SDI). Clint Eastwood rings true again – “a man has gotta know his limitations.”
Henry · May 16, 2026 at 5:19 pm
Thank you for explaining what the mass media can’t be bothered to print. This tragedy is so tough to comprehend and your hunch that the Dunning-Krueger effect underpins the accident seems like the most probable one. A question that immediately comes to mind is what made the survivor change her mind about going down, after allegedly suiting up. Did she understand the risks better than the others did?
Ben C · May 16, 2026 at 5:47 pm
It’s beyond clear at this point it is not a rescue operation. Why are additional people going down at all instead of robots? I know deep dive robots are not nearly as common/available as additional diver bodies to stack into the hole but they sure do kill less of them when exploring.
Cgutes Magoo · May 16, 2026 at 6:14 pm
I agree, declare that fucking hole an tomb and make it an prohib zone.
cave diver · May 16, 2026 at 9:01 pm
The dive is hard but not dangerous – other than the currents which will cause you work much harder and increase risk of OXTOX, high SAC rate, and bends.
It just needs the right plan and the right equipment – and the right TRAINING.
I have done both 300ft+ dives with multi-hour deco and multi-hour cave transits with deco –
the combination of deep and long adds risk… but you PLAN for it… IF you have the proper TRAINING and equipment.
The depth (160ft entry down to 300ft) means you need trimix and planned deco – you plan for this.
Do they have helium? They should as they advertise for Tech diving.
Of the cuff I would start my plan using bottom mix of 32% Nitrox with 40-60% helium depending on max depth. I would use 32% Nitrox as a travel gas and calculate the right mix of 36%+He as the initial deco mix with 36% as the second deco mix – and O2 at 20ft to finish.
The cave transit length (which is not stated) adds time to your deco load – again you plan for this.
Bring snacks, water, and a book – it will be a long deco… I would dive this dry or semi-dry.
As Divemedic states you need to pre-place stage tanks along the route, this takes one or two SHORT deco dives – the first to just above the entry, the second to the edge of the cavern zone.
On the second dive you set up a line from the entry to the edge of the cavern zone, drop the stage tanks, and TURN AROUND.
The NEXT DAY you make your dive into the cave.
You have deco lines dropped from the boat with deco tanks hanging off it at the FIRST deco stop depth and O2 at 30ft for pickup (O2 could be surface supplied at 20ft).
If all they have is recreational equipnent, I would use two 80’s on my back (manifolded prefered, but split works too) and 2-4x 80’s as stage tanks – start on a stage tank with travel/deco gas, switch to bottom mix at about 1.2 PPO2, then swap the deco gas tanks with bottom mix tanks at the cavern zone and continue into the cave.
This takes some logistics planning and extra dive day support would be useful but this in NOT that expensive or man-power intense.
My questions are:
Are the recovery divers cave and trimix trained?
Are they even recovery trained?
Divemedic · May 17, 2026 at 7:37 am
The MOD for EAN32 is 110 feet at 1.4 PPO2 and 130 feet for 1.6 PPO2. At the cave mouth of 160 feet, you would be safe at a max of EAN27. EAN32 for a transit gas is out of the question.
Carrie · May 16, 2026 at 9:26 pm
Thank you for explaining all of these intricate details in this and the previous dive-related post.
It’s a really interesting read and I learned a few things.
As an aside: I once was traveling in Australia (2006, before the Brown invasion) and the vacation plans included snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. I went, and it was an amazing experience.
We had the option to do a dive instead, and my then-boyfriend chose to do a dive instead. Not very deep, I imagine.
But even on Jsut a “sime” dive, I was extremely clear that I liked having the option to lift my head up and have access to oxygen for breathing.
It didn’t diminish the trip in any way. It was an amazing experience that I’m glad I got to have.
Miles · May 17, 2026 at 2:49 am
I got my NAUI certs at the GB SCUBA Club, ran by 1st Group Divers, at Ft Lewis nearly 40 years ago.
The whole premise of the club was to be proficient in repetitive, no decompression diving on air, and we were drilled on working the dive tables to know if we had pushed a limit and had to do a decompression stop, and at what depth, and for how long.
We never got into cave, or gas mix diving as, one there weren’t any caves to dive in the Puget that we knew about and two, the club, as well as us younger soldiers, didn’t have the money for that level of gear.
Personally I was not of a mind to cave dive even if there were some around.
neomunitor · May 17, 2026 at 9:19 am
I agree with Divemedic completely. I am trimix certified, and my deepest ever dive was 267 feet with a bottom time of 20 minutes. I dove in a three man team, we each carried five tanks of appropriate size and gas mix (which included double 100 back tanks of hypoxic trimix), had identical rigs. That is what it took to insure that for any failure scenario everyone on the team got back to the surface without getting bent. It was actually impossible to do with a two man team. The numbers didn’t work. Any dive at those depths is a serious exercise, and throw in an overhead environment and you have just doubled the problems you have to plan for.
JaimeInTexas · May 17, 2026 at 7:34 am
Remote controlled device with camera to find the bodies?
Curtis · May 17, 2026 at 8:24 am
Have a service and sink a small memorial. Why risk more lives to recover bodies?Catfish gotta eat too.
Jess · May 17, 2026 at 9:25 am
I’m a little amazed at the dangerous attempt. Ignorance, and bravado usually end up with such disasters.
Divemedic · May 17, 2026 at 9:37 am
The problem is when you don’t know what you don’t know. I know enough about deep diving, decompression, and mixed gas to at least have an inkling of what it entails. I also realize that there are things I don’t know, and it’s the things that you aren’t even aware that you don’t know that will kill you.
So many people out there don’t understand that, and by the time the discover what it is they don’t know, it’s too late, because they discovered it through experience.
I spent decades of my professional life rescuing people from situations where they put themselves in harm’s way because there was an important factor they weren’t aware of. If I were on a rescue, I would chance it. Call it a calculated risk. For a body recovery? Not a chance in hell.
madmarc · May 17, 2026 at 9:41 am
I knew you would write a response about this, and a very well rounded safe approach to the dive is what I expected from a dive medic.
I’ve done plenty of recreational diving, and even though I did some occasional deep dives on air, (220 feet in a Bahamas coral cave}, I spent no more than 2 minutes at that depth, and the rest of the dive was ascending and decompression stops. Stupid but it was common in the 80’s. I was narced enough to know I had to get back up to the surface.
One possibility I haven’t read about is contaminated air in the tanks of the original group of divers. I’ve done enough diving to know when exhaust fumes or oil has entered the tank and called off a couple of dives because of it. When that many divers are killed at once it is no coincidence. So recovery of the bodies should happen, to at least assess their tank contents.
I’ll be very interested in where this investigation leads as to cause of death. As a retired medic with 29 years of service I’ve seen a few dive related deaths, and have been able to figure out the cause. I’m thinking contaminated air combined with panic. A stupid tragedy if it proves to be so.
Divemedic · May 17, 2026 at 4:01 pm
I menrion the possibility of contamination but they already recovered one body. They can test that air.
I can think of more than a couple of plausible scenarios that dont require air contamination
TRX · May 17, 2026 at 10:47 am
The reason for training and certification is to make sure things like that don’t happen.
One thing that I noticed long ago was, no matter how much you train people, there are always a few who will pass the test and then either forget it instantly or ignore it and do as they damned well please.
Curtis · May 20, 2026 at 12:30 pm
All great information. It is sad to see that once again people on scene were asked if they could do it and get the bodies and nobody stopped to say to them that it was not worth doing because it was far too dangerous. Organizations really need to have people who question the need to do a thing just to nail down whether or not it really needs doing at what cost.
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