She had completed more than 5,000 dives over her lifetime. Her husband never imagined the sea could take her.
Carlo Sommacal, a retired Italian scientist, has broken his silence after losing both his wife and daughter in what is being described as the worst single diving accident in the history of the Maldives.
Monica Montefalcone | Source: Facebook/Mongabay.com
His wife, Monica Montefalcone, 52, a celebrated marine biologist and associate professor of ecology at the University of Genoa, and their daughter, Giorgia Sommacal, 22, a student at the same university, were among five Italians who vanished during a deep-water cave dive on the morning of Thursday, May 14, 2026, never to resurface.
Carlo is now demanding answers — and insisting that something went terribly wrong beneath the waves.
“The only certainty I have is that my wife is among the best divers on the face of the earth,” Sommacal told an Italian newspaper. “She’s never been a reckless person. She would have never jeopardised the life of our daughter or any other young people.”
Carlo Sommacal speaks out following the tragic deaths of his wife and daughter, on May 15, 2026. | Source: YouTube/Primocanale
The group had set out for an 11 a.m. dive in the waters of Vaavu Atoll, roughly 100 kilometres south of the Maldivian capital, Malé, aboard a vessel called “The Duke of York.” The dive was supposed to last an hour.
When the five divers failed to resurface, the crew searched for them by boat before alerting the Coast Guard at 1:45 p.m. A search team was dispatched, but what they found offered little comfort.
Initially, only the body of diving instructor and boat operations manager Gianluca Benedetti, 44, a former banker who had relocated to the Maldives eight years earlier to pursue his passion for the ocean, was located.
His oxygen tanks were found completely empty. The bodies of the remaining four divers were located days later in the deepest section of the cave — the third and furthest chamber from the entrance — by a joint team of Finnish and Maldivian rescue divers.
Montefalcone was no ordinary diver. She had logged more than 5,000 dives and was regarded by WWF as one of the foremost experts on Mediterranean Posidonia ecosystems.
Her life’s work centred on seagrass restoration, coastal protection, and the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity.
She and research fellow Muriel Oddenino, 31, had travelled to the Maldives on an official scientific mission for the University of Genoa to monitor the effects of climate change on tropical biodiversity.
Also in the group were Federico Gualtieri, 31, a recent marine biology graduate whose master’s thesis had focused on coral diversity in the Maldives, and Giorgia, Monica’s own daughter.
Hours before her death, Monica sent an email to a colleague at around 10:15 p.m. on Wednesday, urging further study of the underwater world.
“It is fundamental to observe the underwater environment — which remains far too unknown to the general public — whether with our own eyes or through the lens of a robot,” she wrote. The words, a lifelong credo, would turn out to be among her last.
What makes Carlo’s grief all the more agonising is his certainty that something extraordinary must have gone wrong. On the morning of the fatal dive, the Maldives National Defence Force had issued a yellow level two alert, warning of strong winds and rough seas caused by an intensifying monsoon, and urging special caution to divers.
“If there really was a yellow alert in effect, they must have gone diving beforehand, and something must have happened down there,” he said firmly.
The cave where the tragedy unfolded sits approximately 60 metres (approx. 190 feet) below the surface — double the Maldives’ recreational diving depth limit of 30 metres — and is divided into three interconnected chambers linked by narrow passages.
Italian Ambassador Damiano Francovigh described the recovery operation as particularly complex. “The Maldivian divers were only able to enter the first two chambers, then had to come up to allow time for decompression,” he explained.
The treacherous conditions claimed yet another life when Staff Sgt Mohamed Mahdhee, a member of the Maldivian National Defence Force, died of decompression sickness on Saturday while searching for the missing divers. He surfaced with the group but never came back up.
“Eight rescue divers went into the water today. When they surfaced, they realised Mr Mahdhee didn’t come up,” a Maldivian government spokesman confirmed.
The University of Genoa moved swiftly to distance itself from the incident, stating that while Monica and Muriel were present on an authorised scientific mission, the fatal dive had been undertaken privately and was “in no way part of the activities envisaged by the scientific mission.”
The university also confirmed it had not approved any deep-sea diving as part of the research.
Maldivian government spokesman Mohamed Hossain Shareef added that while the group held a valid research permit allowing descents to 50 metres, the cave itself had not been mentioned in their proposal, and neither Giorgia nor Gianluca were listed as researchers on the permit.
The operating licence of “The Duke of York” has since been suspended pending a full investigation.
Carlo, who says he moved the family from Milan to Genoa because Monica told him, “I love the sea,” is now holding out hope that his wife’s GoPro camera, which she habitually took on dives, may still be recovered and shed light on what unfolded in those final, terrible moments.
He is also having to find the strength to be present for the couple’s son, Matthew, who is still in secondary school.
Online, the tributes to Monica have been deeply moving. “She looks like the warmest human ever…. how sad,” one commenter grieved beneath her obituary.
“This is heartbreaking news. Monica Montefalcone’s passion for marine conservation was inspiring, and her legacy will live on through her work,” another mourned.
“So sad to read about this tragedy. My deepest recognition to her, her work and colleagues as well!” a third wrote.
In a cruel irony, the woman who devoted her career to understanding, preserving, and repairing the sea ultimately lost her life to it — along with the daughter who had grown up beside her, watching sunsets and listening to her mother speak of Posidonia as casually as the weather. At this time, the cause of the deaths remains under official investigation.
