Deep-sea diver Gianluca Lopez has worked in many parts of the world but the most difficult job of his career was the massive salvage operation on the Costa Concordia. He speaks to Kurt Sansone about the experience

An eerie silence surrounds Gianluca Lopez as he enters the hull of a shipwreck through a massive gash finding his way past rusted metal pipes.

The only noise is the sound of his breathing apparatus and the crackling voice of the man guiding him via radio through the dark innards of the Costa Concordia.

He passes through submerged corridors and metal doorways trying to get orientation in a listed wreck.

Mr Lopez, 42, has to find an oil leak in the engine room, which risks contaminating the sea around Isola del Giglio, a little island off the Tuscan coast, where the 300-metre cruise ship hit a rock.

The accident in January 2012 and although more than 4,000 passengers and crew were rescued in a six-hour operation, 32 died.

The captain, Francesco Schettino, is facing manslaughter charges for changing the ship’s course and abandoning the ship while passengers were still being evacuated.

Two bodies were not found and that prospect haunted Mr Lopez, an Italian deep-sea commercial diver, who was involved in the ship’s salvage operation.

Speaking from the living room of his Mellieħa apartment where he lives with his partner and two daughters, Mr Lopez relives the experience.

“When I first arrived on site some three months after the accident it took me almost two weeks to get used to waking up every morning to witness such a massive wreck that claimed the lives of 32 people,” he says.

A particular image that haunts him is a pair of red running shoes strewn on the seabed next to the wreck.

“I saw many personal belongings inside and outside the wreck – spectacles, underwear, beauty products and a Formula 1 simulator in the gym area signed by Michael Schumacher – but those shoes remain stuck in my head,” he says.

Mr Lopez worked back-to-back, night and day with hundreds of other divers to prepare the foundations for an undersea platform on which the ship had to rest when brought back into an upright position.

The salvage operation was the most difficult of his career and one he hopes will never happen again.

“I was there for more than a year and each time it was my turn to dive it always brought a shudder to my spine knowing that two dead people were still inside.”

Mr Lopez picked up his passion for diving from his father.

Aged seven he used to go out on the boat with his father and elder siblings but as he grew older Mr Lopez chose to take his passion a step further and forge a career out of it.

In 1995 he opened up a diving shop and started courses for disabled people, something Mr Lopez admits gave him immense satisfaction.

It was on his first minor job as a commercial diver in Italy that a foreman spotted his qualities and put him in touch with a company that operated on oil rigs.

I saw many personal belongings inside and outside the wreck – spectacles, underwear – but those shoes remain stuck in my head

Mr Lopez lost his father three days before heading out to Egypt for his first major underwater job. It is a regret he has.

“I was unable to show my father the job I got, something which he would have been proud of,” he says.

It is a misfortune Mr Lopez faced while working on the Concordia wreck.

Just three days before the operation to upright the ship was to happen, he had to leave Giglio to bury his mother. “I was not there for the crowning moment when we eagerly waited to see whether our job was successfully executed,” he says.

Mr Lopez moved to Malta with his family in 2009 after falling in love with the island while on his way to work in Libya. It was a boon for his partner Loredana, who cherished the island life on Lampedusa where she was born.

“Malta is in many ways similar to Lampedusa but the girls could also get a good education in English,” he says.

His children are the reason why Mr Lopez has quit his freelance career as a deep sea diver. In one year’s work on the Concordia he only saw them for 45 days.

“I want to find a job here in Malta to be able to spend time with my children,” he says.

But his long-held dream is to set up a diving museum in Malta. At home he has an extensive private collection of antique dive suits, underwater cameras and other equipment that depict the history of man’s underwater exploits.

“I am in search of a business partner who will help me realise this dream. I would also like to create a cartoon strip that teaches children the history and beauty of diving,” he says.

Anybody interested in Mr Lopez’s museum idea can contact him on gianlucalopez1972@libero.it.