Among the five people who died on 14 May during a dive in the Maldives was Monica Montefalcone, a professor at the University of Genoa who had dedicated her career to the study of marine ecosystems. With her were her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, a university student, Federico Gualtieri, a recent graduate of the University of Genoa, researcher Muriel Oddenino, and Gianluca Benedetti, operations manager of the company Albatros Top Boat.

A commitment to protecting the sea, from research to fieldwork

The sea had always been at the heart of Monica Montefalcone's prolific academic activity. She had graduated in Biological Sciences from the Università degli Studi di Milano with a thesis on the health status of Posidonia oceanica meadows, a marine plant endemic to the Mediterranean Sea with great ecosystem value, but one that has long been in decline due to fishing, anchoring and pollution. Posidonia oceanica was also the subject of her doctoral research in Marine Science at the University of Genoa, where she had continued to work, first as a researcher and then, from 2024, as an associate professor of Ecology.

Her solid academic background and passion for the sea led her over the years to engage in the protection of marine ecosystems on many fronts. Montefalcone was the operational coordinator in Liguria for the national GhostNets project, dedicated to the removal of abandoned fishing nets, and she oversaw monitoring activities on the effects of climate change on coastal habitats and coralligenous communities. She had also worked with Greenpeace, on the Mare Caldo project examining the effects of the climate crisis in the Mediterranean and on the AMPower project concerning the expansion of marine protected areas. She was also involved in the mapping of Italian marine habitats and in the conservation of Pinna nobilis. She collaborated with international bodies such as the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (Iucn). She had dozens of scientific publications to her name.

Monica Montefalcone on the scientific team of the Water Defenders Alliance

When LifeGate's Water Defenders Alliance assembled its scientific team, Monica Montefalcone joined enthusiastically, making her expertise available. She took part in all phases of Coop's "Foresta Blu" campaign: first with the reforestation of 200 square metres of Posidonia oceanica off the coast of the island of Bergeggi, in Liguria, and then with the planting of a further 2,000 plants at the island of Elba, in the municipality of Cavo, where a buoy field was also set up. Both programmes got under way in 2024 and have since been monitored at regular intervals. Also thanks to the innovative planting protocol devised by the International School for Scientific Diving, the results are excellent — both in terms of cutting survival rates and the positive signals observed in the surrounding ecosystem.

"Over the past three years I was fortunate enough to work alongside Monica. Her loss leaves an immense void, both on a human and a professional level. Monica was a person of great worth, an extraordinary and passionate scientist and science communicator," says Lajal Andreoletti, head of socio-environmental impact projects at LifeGate. "She had the rare gift of bringing science closer to people, of transforming the complexity of the sea into a shared sense of wonder. To listen to her speak about Posidonia, corals and the marine world was to let yourself be swept up in her genuine passion, her expertise and her ability to convey enchantment. I will carry with me the privilege of having shared a stretch of the road with her."