{"id":19202,"date":"2026-05-23T20:45:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T20:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/19202\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T20:45:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T20:45:28","slug":"husband-remembers-woman-who-died-diving-in-maldives-spot-that-killed-italian-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/19202\/","title":{"rendered":"Husband remembers woman who died diving in Maldives spot that killed Italian group"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> said his wife was only supposed to go to 65 feet, but a guide took her more than 175 feet underwater.<\/p>\n

Giorgio Bettin\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was supposed to be a short dive, but I never saw my wife alive again,\u201d Bettin told Italy\u2019s Il Gazzettino<\/a>, as a criminal investigators in Rome<\/a> probe who made the decision for a group to explore a cave 160 feet underwater<\/a> May 14 without the required training, permit or equipment.<\/p>\n

Giorgio Bettin\u2019s wife died 40 years ago in the same spot that claimed the lives of five Italian tourists last week. Giorgio Bettin\/Facebook<\/p>\n

Giorgio Bettin\u2019s and his wife Anna Maria Pistolato were newlyweds on vacation in the Maldives in 1983. Courtesy of Giorgio Bettin<\/p>\n

Bettin, who didn\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n

Her body was only found 20 days later, almost unrecognizable.<\/p>\n

He only later learned the group went at least 175 feet underwater, below the country\u2019s legal recreational diving limit of 100 feet \u2014 a decision that was inexplicably made by their guide, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was ordered to pay monetary compensation \u2014 something, honestly, that meant absolutely nothing to me,\u201d said Bettin, who did not reveal the amount. <\/p>\n

\u201cSince that day, I\u2019ve never gone diving again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bettin\u2019s story comes amid a police investigation into how the group drowned in the \u201cshark cave\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Follow the latest on the five divers\u2019 deaths in the Maldives:<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 and it was not part of the plan.<\/p>\n

Five Italian tourists died scuba diving in the same spot that also claimed the life of Bettin\u2019s wife 40 years ago. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The circumstances and the aftermath are eerily similar to what happened to Bettin\u2019s wife and himself \u2014 who said the way the victims\u2019 families were treated afterward still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing they wanted to do the very next day was to ship me off to Padua,\u201d he said. \u201cThey found me a return flight and sent me back to Italy while the search operations were still underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey probably didn\u2019t want me to see or know anything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The husband of a woman who died scuba diving over 40 years ago at the same Maldives spot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7579,12094,5,12049,12117,243],"class_list":["post-19202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-death","tag-diving","tag-italy","tag-maldives","tag-scuba-divers","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}