Divers recovered five bodies from the Bayesian on Wednesday, the superyacht that sank early Monday morning off the coast of Sicily. Officials have identified them as tech billionaire Mike Lynch, Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judith Bloomer and Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo. Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah is still missing. According to the Independent, the Italian Coast Guard is still searching the area where the yacht sank, although one official said it’s possible she was thrown into the sea.
One factor complicating search efforts is the fact that the Bayesian is now 160 feet below the surface. Diving that deep is more dangerous than your typical scuba dive, and additional precautions have to be taken, which inevitably slows things down.
The passengers were reportedly on a Mediterranean vacation to celebrate Lynch being found not guilty of all charges in a fraud trial that ended in June. Morvillo represented Lynch as his lawyer, and Bloomer, a Morgan Stanley banker, testified in Lynch’s favor. Their celebration was cut short when Sicily was hit by serious storms. One nearby city received four inches of rain in just four hours. Officials have also said they believe a waterspout powerful enough to essentially be a tornado over the water formed in the area and may have contributed to the yacht sinking so quickly.
The Independent has also obtained a video from a nearby camera that captured the Bayesian sinking in the middle of the storm. It’s hard to make out many details in the video, but you can at least get a sense of how hard it was raining. Also, as authorities previously suggested, it does go down much faster than you’d expect from a 184-foot boat. A nearby boat, however, was mostly unharmed, and an investigation is ongoing into why that was.
