Mel Fisher Atocha Site

She was from Montana and a stranger to the ocean, but quickly became a mermaid called "Deo." On their honeymoon, the handsome young couple went diving on shipwrecks in Florida and the Florida Keys. They planned to open a store devoted exclusively to diving. To raise the money, they dived commercially for spiny lobster in the frigid California waters. This was grueling but lucrative work and they built their own business one wall at a time. Finally they opened Mel's Aqua Shop in Redondo Beach, California. This was the first "dive shop" in the world.

Mel and Dolores Fisher were hugely successful in this pioneering business, training more than 65,000 novices in the science of scuba diving. Years later Mel received a prestigious award for his contributions to education in diving. An undersea pioneer, Mel made early underwater films and movies, for training, advertising and

entertainment purposes. When television was still young, Mel Fisher aired his own underwater adventures on weekly "T~' shows that reached millions of viewers on the nation's West Coast. A great photogenic help with Mel's underwater commercials for swimwear manufacturers, Dolores personally set a world underwater endurance record that continues through the years to stand as a woman's underwater endurance record of more than 55 hours and 37 minutes (55:37:9-6)

Mel and Deo were the unofficial "king and queen" of the underwater world.
Mel nearly began a second California "gold rush" by introducing the adventurous to hunting for gold in mountain streams and rivers. Mountain gold hunting was great fun. But in the back of Mel's mind, always, was an undersea vision of golden doubloons and Spanish shipwrecks. He even named his first dive boat the Golden Doubloon.
Mel Fisher Story ->