A Room in the Museum
The Captain Fizz Room
Honoring Capt. Carl "Fizz" Fismer, the treasure diver who spent five decades bringing history up from the seafloor, and a lifetime giving its stories away for free.
The Diver
Some people find a shipwreck. Carl Fismer found more than a hundred.
Known to everyone in the treasure world simply as "Fizz," Carl Fismer spent over fifty years diving the great wrecks of the Spanish Main. He worked the 1715 fleet off Fort Pierce, the waters our own museum overlooks, and the 1733 fleet in the Florida Keys. He dove the Concepcion off the Dominican Republic and the San Josef off Panama, and he worked alongside Mel Fisher during the era of the famous Atocha and Santa Margarita recoveries. Writers and producers called him when they wanted their treasure stories to be true; audiences knew him from the television show Treasure Divers and his book, Uncharted Waters.
Fizz was famous for something rarer than gold: generosity with what he knew. He mentored younger divers, told the stories straight, and treated treasure hunting as history's work, not just fortune's. He credited much of his own success to the research of his friend Jack Haskins, the archivist whose collection lives one room away in our museum, and he honored that debt by co-authoring a book about Haskins' life, Time Ranger.
Capt. Fismer crossed the bar in August 2024 and was laid to rest at Sarasota National Cemetery. The room that bears his name keeps his kind of treasure hunting alive: careful, curious, and shared with everyone.
A Life in Wrecks
Where he worked
The 1715 Fleet, Florida
The treasure fleet lost off our own coast, which Fizz worked across decades of seasons. Read the fleet's story.
The 1733 Fleet, Florida Keys
The other great Spanish fleet disaster in Florida waters, scattered down the Keys where Fizz lived for many years.
Concepcion & San Josef
Storied galleons off Hispaniola and Panama, wrecks found through archival research and worked by the best divers of the era.
In the Museum
Step into his room
The Captain Fizz Room in our museum gathers the tools and trophies of the working treasure diver: a recovered cannon, the explorer's field glasses, an ornate recovered blade, and photographs from beneath the sea, every artifact a real scan. You can walk it today in our 3D concept walkthrough.
The Dispatch
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Carry It Forward
Help build the room that remembers
Your support builds the museum where the next generation meets divers like Fizz.