Experienced Italian cave and technical diver Luca Pedrali died following an exploratory dive at a karst spring on the Meditrranean island of Sardinia on 9 October.
Pedrali, 60 and originally from Brescia, was based at Salo near Lake Garda in northern Italy. He had gone to Sardinia on an expedition to explore the Su Gologone resurgence, one of Italy’s most complex and deep karst systems and regarded as a challenging environment.
The system lies near Oliena at the foot of the Supramonte mountain range in the east of the island.
Pedrali’s was one of two teams working in adjacent submerged systems – the other group had been in the Mussin Tomasu system, diving to check for a possible connection between the two.
In late morning the diver was at a depth of about 100m when he reported feeling unwell but had managed to surface and remove his equipment before his condition deteriorated.
Fellow-divers and paramedics attempted emergency resuscitation but he could not be saved, the National Alpine & Speleological Rescue Corps reported.
Rescue teams from Cagliari and Sassari attended the scene, and technical equipment used on the dive was impounded by authorities investigating the incident.
The local magistrate was reported not to have ordered a post mortem examination, and Pedrali’s body is in the care of his family.
In 2014 Pedrali set an Italian national record for cave-penetration depth by pushing beyond 1,300m during an expedition, and in 2017 he established a national open-water depth record in Lake Garda when he reached a depth of 264.8m, using a closed-circuit rebreather at a site between Tremosine and Limone.
