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A Maldivian Coast Guard diver has died in the effort to recover the bodies of four Italian divers that officials believe are deep inside an underwater cave. Five divers were killed in the scuba diving tragedy earlier this week, with only one victim’s body recovered so far. Sergeant Major Mohamed Mahudhee became sick when the search resumed Saturday, 200 feet deep inside an underwater cave in Vaavu Atoll, Maldives President Dr Mohamed Muizzu confirmed. Mahudhee, a member of the Maldivian National Defense Force, was rushed to the hospital, but didn’t survive. His cause of death is underwater decompression sickness, officials...

Five Italian tourists have died while exploring underwater caves 160ft below the surface in the Maldives. The group had set off on a diving expedition on Thursday morning to explore the Vaavu atoll, according to local media. Authorities received reports of the divers' disappearance at around 1.45pm local time after they failed to resurface at around midday. During the search and rescue operation, their bodies were discovered. According to initial reports, the five tourists had boarded the 'luxury' Duke of York yacht, a foreign-operated live-aboard diving vessel, and they disappeared near Alimatha, one of the atoll's most popular diving spots....

A veteran Maldivian diver alleges the five Italians who died trapped in a deep underwater cave didn’t have the required government authorization to undertake such a perilous dive, and would still be alive today if the rules had been followed. A group of five Italian scuba divers died exploring the Alimathaa cave in the Vaavu Atoll Thursday, at a depth of about 160 feet, according to Italy’s Foreign Ministry. Shafraz Naeem, a instructor-trainer with 30 years of technical diving experience and advisor to the Maldives National Defence Force, has done more than 50 dives in the cave where the group...

The growing Chinese 'gate crashers' trend is sparking espionage concerns The FBI and Department of Defense have reportedly tracked more than 100 incidents of Chinese nationals posing as tourists to attempt to breach U.S. military bases and other federal sites. Those responsible, dubbed "gate crashers," range from Chinese nationals detected crossing into a U.S. missile range in New Mexico, to scuba divers caught swimming in murky waters near a U.S. government rocket launch site in Florida, several U.S. officials recently told The Wall Street Journal. The growing trend represents a potential espionage threat, as authorities believe the Chinese government in...

Car is upside down in only 14' of water. We have CONFIRMED Kiely is inside. Family Notified Law Enforcement on their way. ... We will be on scene the rest of the day, will have a live stream tomorrow, and will make an announcement as to what time later this afternoon.

Divers hunting for lost artwork from the legendary Amber Room looted by the Nazis are to begin searching a WWII shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea after photos revealed unidentified paintings and possible artefacts. The 12-man team from the Baltictech diving group will spend 10 days off the coast of Gdansk, Poland, at the end of May at the site where the German steamer Karlsruhe was sank by a Royal Navy submarine in 1945. Tomasz Stachura from Baltictech told MailOnline that initial observations of the wreck had revealed several 'non-military crates' as well as what appears to be...

A Swedish expedition team has found an unidentified object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, leaving some to believe it’s the remnants of an extra-terrestrial ship. Scientists went off on a deep-water dive to debunk some theories about the underwater object, but were left with more questions than they had answers. The divers found that the object was raised about 10 to 13 feet above the seabed, and curved in at the sides. “First we thought this was only stone, but this is something else,” Ocean X team diver Peter Lindberg said in a press release. The object had...

Federal investigators on Thursday released a preliminary report on the Conception boat that killed nearly three-dozen people earlier this month off the coast of California, and said the entire crew was asleep when the blaze began. National Transportation Safety Board officials have said the full investigation could take more than a year, and preliminary findings highlight remaining questions as much as they provide answers as to how the tragedy happened. “A crew member sleeping in the wheelhouse berths was awakened by a noise and got up to investigate,” the report said. “As crew members awoke, the captain radioed a distress...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Twitter this morning accused British diver Vern Unsworth of being a pedophile, after Unsworth criticized Musk’s proposal to use a small submarine to rescue a trapped soccer team in Thailand. Unsworth was instrumental in the rescue of the boy’s soccer team, but lambasted Musk’s submarine plan in an interview published by CNN Friday. Among other comments, Unsworth said the submarine “wouldn’t have made the first 50 meters into the cave” and was “just a PR stunt.” Musk, responding to further criticism from professor and New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci, wrote this morning that he...

LONDON — We all have hobbies we enjoy. Rick Stanton’s just happens to be scuba diving into cold, lightless, claustrophobic, dangerous caves. Stanton and his diving partner, John Volanthen, have been identified in the British media as the two British divers who first discovered the 12 children and soccer coach trapped in a cavern in northern Thailand. In the dramatic video footage of the moment when the divers reach the group, nine days after they disappeared, a diver with a British accent is heard talking to the group. “How many of you? Thirteen? Brilliant,” he says, as a beam from...

The moment that rescue divers Rick Stanton and John Volanthen found 12 Thai schoolboys and their soccer coach after nearly 10 days in a flooded cave is difficult to forget. “How many are you?” Mr. Stanton said, waving a flashlight toward the bedraggled, hungry boys. “13? Brilliant!” It was the latest in a long series of rescue missions undertaken by the British duo, widely regarded as among a select few cave divers with the necessary skills and experience to find a path to youngsters cut off deep inside. “They are the best in the business,” said another diver

Few answers appear in the probe of students in Netherlands suspected of ties to Al Qaeda AMSTERDAM — The guys around the scuba school laughingly called them the "Al Qaeda Diving Team." But for law enforcement officials, it was no joke. Late last year, Dutch counter-terrorism agents investigating a possible Al Qaeda recruitment cell grew interested in the school because a man suspected of recruiting terrorists had become a certified diver and studied to be an instructor there. Iraqi-born Kasim Ali was one of between 50 and 150 Muslim men who had taken classes in recent years with the same...

A Colorado man, despite acknowledging that he's lucky to be alive after being trapped in a submerged car, has filed an intent to sue his rescuers for half a million dollars. Roy Ortiz filed his intent to sue the county of Boulder and his rescuers for a tentative $500,000 as a "preservative" measure, his attorney, Ed Ferszt, told ABCNews.com. Ferszt said the county should have closed the road during floods in September. He said the first responders were also included because they did not realize Ortiz was trapped in the car until they prepared to lift it out of the...

The Navy divers knew it was a risky operation. The Aberdeen “super pond” was deep enough to hold a 14-story building. Its water was black and cold. And the bottom was a tangle of muck and debris. An Army diver had died there a month earlier. And now, with some crucial equipment broken, James E. Reyher said Ryan Harris had to make the dive with scuba gear, and little margin for error. Even for a quick “bounce” dive, scuba tanks would give them only about 11 minutes of air to go down 150 feet and get back up. It was...

The dive that claimed the lives of two members of an elite Navy team wasn't the only thing that went wrong that February day at Aberdeen Proving Ground's Super Pond, witnesses testified during a military hearing Wednesday. First, the underwater breathing units that the team took to Aberdeen failed, forcing the divers to change equipment. Then, the first two men into the water had to cut their dive short when the line that tethered them to their boat tangled. That was when Diver 1st Class James Reyher and Diver 2nd Class Ryan Harris took their fatal plunge. The standby diver...

One of the highlights of the 2012 Olympics will undoubtedly be diving. There’s been some stiff competition this year, especially in the preliminary rounds, and all the athletes have been killing themselves trying to look as graceful as possible while tumbling through the air. How do we know? There’s something on each diver’s face that just reads, “This stunt is kind of difficult to do.” These competitors may look like elegant swans from a distance, but when the camera gets right up close for those slow-motion instant replays, not one of them is capable of hiding the pain in their...

The Sideshow: A team of salvage divers has discovered an unexplained object resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Sweden. “This thing turned up. My first reaction was to tell the guys that we have a UFO here on the bottom,” said Peter Lindberg, the leader of the treasure hunters. Sonar readings show that the mysterious object is about 60 meters across, or, about the size of a jumbo jet. And it’s not alone. Nearby on the sea floor is another, smaller object with a similar shape. Even more fascinating, both objects have “drag marks” behind them on...

Two terrified divers were left stranded in shark-infested waters when their charter boat disappeared. Paul Kline and Fernando Garcia Puerta had to cling to a buoy for two hours after surfacing from their late-afternoon dive in the Atlantic Ocean three miles from Miami and finding no trace of their boat. 'We were in shock. We could easily have died,' Kline, 44, told the Miami Herald. 'If night had fallen, the situation would have turned into panic.' He said they kept talking to each other throughout their ordeal 'to try to keep up our high spirits'. Mr Kline, a married father...

A group of Finnish and Swedish divers made a rare find on the Baltic seabed. If verified, the discovery could be the world's oldest drinkable champagne. Divers exploring a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea found 30 bottles of the champagne, believed to date back to the 18th-century. One of the bottles of Veuve-Cliquot has been shipped to France for analysis by champagne experts. Dark, cold conditions on the seabed are believed to have kept the champagne in excellent condition. Experts say one bottle may be worth nearly $65,000. If confirmed, the bottles would beat the previous title of the world's...

"Navy foils attack in waters near Gaza" SNIPPET: "As Gaza flotillas make headlines, Palestinian cell wearing diving suits attempts to launch attack from sea. IDF force spots cell members in waters of Nahal Aza area, opens fire. Al-Aqsa Brigades say four people killed, one missing. Shortly afterwards, IAF attacks rocket launching cell attacked in northern Gaza; one gunmen moderately hurt SNIPPET: "As the Gaza-bound flotillas continue to make headlines, the Israeli Navy thwarted an attack from the sea early Monday. According to the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson's Unit, a Navy force spotted a cell in the waters of the Nahal...