Melvin A. Fisher

1922-1998

American Treasure Hunter

Famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher caught the fever as a young boy when he read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. His dreams of gold and other underwater riches led him to pursue a diving business and ultimately a career in historic underwater salvage. In 1985, his team made the discovery of a lifetime when they located the treasure cargo of the lost Spanish galleon Atocha.

On August 21, 1922, Mel Fisher was born in Hobart, Indiana, where, as a young boy, he dreamed of pirates and treasure after reading Treasure Island. At the time, news stories chronicled the adventures of deep-sea diving pioneers such as Dr. William Beebe (1877-1962) who were exploring the depths of the ocean using "hard hat" suits and bathyspheres. Inspired, eleven-year-old Mel invented his own dive helmet using a bucket, some hose, and a bicycle pump so, in the absence of nearby oceans, he could explore a mud-bottomed lagoon in his hometown.

After graduation from high school in Glen Park, Indiana, Fisher studied engineering at Purdue University. With the commencement of World War II, he joined the U.S. Army and trained with its Corps of Engineers. Before being shipped to Europe, Fisher pursued further engineering studies at the University of Alabama, which later awarded him an honorary doctorate. During his European tour with the Corps of Engineers, Fisher traveled in France and Germany making repairs to damaged structures and building his repertory of engineering skills.

By the end of World War II, developments in the sport and technology of diving prompted Fisher to open California's first dive shop on his family's chicken ranch in Torrance. His small operation offered dive lessons and equipment, including Fisher's modified snorkel gear. He supported his personal diving activities by making some of the first underwater movies, encouraging others to learn how to dive. In 1953, Fisher decided to sell the ranch and concentrate on his dive business. While negotiating with the potential buyers, he met their daughter, Dolores (known as "Deo"), whom he introduced to diving and quickly married. Their honeymoon was spent diving on shipwrecks in Florida and its Keys, while Fisher shot one of his best-known diving films, The Other End of the Line. Upon returning to California, the Fishers dove commercially for spiny lobsters while they built their own diving business, eventually opening Mel's Aqua Shop in Redondo Beach.

Early business for Mel's Aqua Shop included introducing scuba diving for gold in California's rivers, Fisher's first successful treasure hunting. The family explored the California coast and the Caribbean for shipwrecks, while Fisher continued to experiment with new equipment, developing new wet suits, underwater cameras, and spear guns. In 1962, treasure fever took hold of the Fishers, and the family abandoned its business in California to move to Florida's East Coast in search of the remains of the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet—and to work for no pay while searching for treasure. Nearly a year went by without success when one of Fisher's salvage inventions, a device called the "mailbox," uncovered over a thousand gold coins, the first of several significant discoveries by the team.

By the late 1960s, Fisher's focus shifted to other treasures of the Spanish Main, and he learned about a Spanish galleon called the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which had gone down in 1622 in the Florida Keys. The search for the Atocha consumed Fisher for nearly two decades. Along the way, tragedy struck the family when one of the salvage boats capsized in 1975 and his oldest son, Dirk, his daughter-in-law, Angel, and another diver were lost. There were successes, however, including the 1980 discovery of the Atocha's sister ship, the Santa Margarita, which yielded more than 20 million dollars worth of gold and other riches. In 1985, the Atocha was finally located—its cargo represented the richest treasure found since the opening of King Tut's tomb in the 1930s. Estimated value put it at nearly half a billion dollars. More valuable to cultural archaeologists were Atocha's thousands of historical artifacts, including rare seventeenth-century navigational instruments.

The monumental discoveries made by Mel Fisher and his team of divers, archaeologists, and salvage experts were only a small part of his legacy after his death in 1998 from cancer. He also left behind the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, founded in 1982, and the Mel Fisher Center, Inc., opened in the 1990s to provide conservation and exhibition facilities for many of the treasures located by his salvage expeditions. Society archaeologists continue to search the world's oceans for shipwrecks, extending Fisher's legacy by adding to the artifacts in the collection housed by the Society.

ANN T. MARSDEN