Husband recounts wife’s tragic scuba dive death 40 years ago at same Maldives spot that killed 5 Italian tourists

The husband of a woman who died scuba diving over 40 years ago at the same Maldives spot that claimed the lives of five Italian tourists said his wife was only supposed to go to 65 feet, but a guide took her more than 175 feet underwater.

Giorgio Bettin’s wife Anna Maria Pistolato, an underwater photographer, dived the same Vaavu Atoll as the group, when the couple were newlyweds on vacation in the Maldives on Jan. 11, 1983.

“It was supposed to be a short dive, but I never saw my wife alive again,” Bettin told Italy’s Il Gazzettino, as a criminal investigators in Rome probe who made the decision for a group to explore a cave 160 feet underwater May 14 without the required training, permit or equipment.

Bettin, who didn’t participate, said the plan was for the group of six to dive to 65 feet, but to his horror as he waited on the boat, Pistolato never resurfaced.

Her body was only found 20 days later, almost unrecognizable.

He only later learned the group went at least 175 feet underwater, below the country’s legal recreational diving limit of 100 feet — a decision that was inexplicably made by their guide, he said.

“He was ordered to pay monetary compensation — something, honestly, that meant absolutely nothing to me,” said Bettin, who did not reveal the amount.

“Since that day, I’ve never gone diving again.”

Bettin’s story comes amid a police investigation into how the group drowned in the “shark cave” and why they made the decision to enter it in the first place. They only had regular oxygen tanks, not the trimix of oxygen, nitrogen, and helium required at those depths.

Follow the latest on the five divers’ deaths in the Maldives:

• Diver dies while searching for bodies of tourists killed in Maldives scuba tragedy
• How sole survivor of ill-fated Maldives scuba dive that killed 5 narrowly escaped death
• What is oxygen toxicity? The scuba diving risk that may have caused 5 tourists’ deaths in the Maldives
• Italy opens its own investigation into divers’ deaths in Maldives as ‘very bad’ weather halts recovery
• Oxygen toxicity, panic may have led to deaths of 5 tourists on Maldives scuba dive: experts

With what the had in their scuba tanks, they could have only survived at most 10 minutes that deep, said one of the elite Finnish divers who recovered their remains.

The Italian tour operator, Albatros, and the University of Genoa, which commissioned the research some of the marine biologists were in the Maldives to conduct, were quick to say they had not authorized the deep dive — and it was not part of the plan.

The circumstances and the aftermath are eerily similar to what happened to Bettin’s wife and himself — who said the way the victims’ families were treated afterward still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

“The first thing they wanted to do the very next day was to ship me off to Padua,” he said. “They found me a return flight and sent me back to Italy while the search operations were still underway.

“They probably didn’t want me to see or know anything.”