A New Zealand coroner has recommended banning the importation of a consumer “tankless” diving system after a 58-year-old freediver drowned while using the device off Mana Island, near Wellington.

Shengwei Cao died on 5 March 2023 while using a Wolach 919 surface-supplied breathing unit bought online. Coroner Amelia Steel ruled his death an accidental drowning, with decompression complications contributing.

The investigation into the Maldives cave-diving disaster that killed five Italian divers and one Maldivian rescuer is expanding, with Italian prosecutors formally requesting equipment, cameras and documentation from Maldivian authorities as part of an ongoing culpable manslaughter inquiry.

DAN Europe and Maldivian authorities have released a detailed preliminary reconstruction of the recovery operation following the cave diving tragedy at Dhekunu Kandu, also known as Thinwana Kandu, in the Maldives.

Over four operational days between 18 and 21 May, an international recovery mission involving DAN Europe, the Maldives National Defence Force, Maldivian police diving units and a Finnish specialist cave-diving team successfully located and recovered all four missing divers from inside the cave system.

DAN Europe confirmed on 18 May that a specialist international search and recovery team successfully completed the first operational cave dive at the Dhekunu Kandu site in Vaavu Atoll, where five Italian divers died earlier this month.

According to DAN, the three-member recovery team located all four remaining missing victims during a technical cave penetration dive lasting approximately three hours.

Authorities in the Maldives confirmed that five Italian divers lost their lives during a cave dive, while a rescue diver later died during efforts to recover the bodies.

According to official statements and international news reports, the group became trapped inside an underwater cave system during a dive near Vaavu Atoll. Poor weather and difficult underwater conditions complicated the subsequent search-and-recovery operation.

The divers became separated from their boat during an excursion, leading them to cling to each other for survival. Camila Storchi and her husband were sailing from Kaneohe to Honolulu when they heard the desperate cries. Storchi recounted to local station Hawaii News Now, “We were passing Hanauma and going around China Walls. He heard screaming for help and he started scanning the ocean and we saw five little dots.”

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK (nrk.no) first reported the diving incident:

An American citizen has been confirmed dead after a diving accident in the Plura Cave in Rana. Although a defibrillator was used after a short time, his life was not saved.

The following is a first-hand statement given to me by one of the divers involved with the fatal dive. They spoke to me on the evening of 4 April 2023. 

The team had been gathering material for the David Attenborough documentary Our Planet II. They were operating an inflatable boat around the Laysan area of Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in order to capture footage of tiger sharks consuming young albatross fledglings.

On Friday 25 November 2022, a lower court found diver Arthur Castillo, 60, guilty of the involuntary homicide of his long-time dive buddy Christine Gauci, who died following a dive in Mgarr ix-Xini, a bay on the southern coast of Gozo in January 2020. Gauci was an Armed Forces of Malta member, diving instructor and technical diver.

In a ruling that caused outrage in the diving community, the lower court handed Castillo a two-year jail term suspended for four years, which was immediately appealed.