In Remembrance of Deo Fisher

This week was a sad week for all of us that are involved with the Mel Fisher family. Deo Fisher passed away on Tuesday. She was the widow of Mel Fisher. Tom and I had a honor of meeting her a few years ago before she went to live in Montana on a full time basis. Her life was an amazing one so I took the story from the local news paper that was written by Mandy Bolen. She is a friend of ours who also writes a great article each week called Tan Lines that I love so and provided a great story of Deo so it is included below....

Delores Fisher

Mother. Diver. Seeker. Stoic.

All have been used to describe Dolores “Deo” Fisher, widow of the late treasure hunter Mel Fisher, who lost her own battle with cancer Tuesday afternoon — 10 years and one month after her legendary husband succumbed to the same.

Although she was born, and died, in Montana, Deo Fisher lived a waterlogged life on both coasts.

Born Dolores Horton, she married the charismatic Mel Fisher in 1953 in California when she was 17. The young married couple embarked on Mel’s dream of opening a shop that catered exclusively to the burgeoning population of recreational scuba divers, and Deo did her part to entice more female participants to the sport. Together, she and Mel taught an estimated 65,000 people how to dive.

In August 1959, she broke the world’s underwater endurance record by remaining submerged in a 10-foot-deep porpoise tank for more than 55 hours and 37 minutes using scuba equipment.

The Key West community met Deo Fisher when she arrived in the early 1970s with her young family to begin Mel’s search for the treasure of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha.

The family’s struggle, determination and perseverance in the wake of the tragedy that killed Deo’s eldest son, Dirk, and his wife, are the stuff of local legend. But Deo was not Mel, and she was a mother above all else.

“Deo was as tough and resolute as Mel, but her gentle demeanor and outright beauty often made you forget that,” said Corey Malcom, director of archaeology at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum.

Malcom arrived in Key West immediately after the 1985 discovery of the mother lode of the Atocha. He worked for an archaeological company hired by Mel to oversee the excavation of the historic shipwreck.

“For many years, she served as a de facto mother for a very large crew of divers,” Malcom recalled Tuesday. “If someone had a personal problem, she was the one to go to.”

Personal problems were plentiful in the slim days leading up to July 1985 and the discovery of the sunken treasure.

“Her love for the ocean and all it contained was only surpassed by the love for her family,” said Melissa Kendrick, executive director of the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, which Deo helped found in 1982. “She had those really basic attributes of a solid American Midwesterner,” said Don Kincaid, who worked for the Fisher family for several years and documented the Atocha search and recovery for “National Geographic.” He survived the night the salvage ship sank, taking Dirk’s life. “Many of the divers had come from broken families, and Deo was very much the mother of all of us, and we all thought of her that way.”

No details about funeral arrangements were available Tuesday, but will be forthcoming.