Elite Traveler Winter 2019

elite traveler WINTER 2019 91

monsters… I would just look at them and think, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’” In the 1950s, most of the ocean was unexplored; Earle was fortunate to study at a rare place in the US with scuba tanks and regulators, so she could descend for longer than she could hold her breath. She’s spent nearly 8,000 hours underwater, some beneath the surface for up to two weeks at a time, some in a submarine and much of it diving. Earle’s enterprising spirit led her to found DOER Marine — now run by her daughter — to create equipment for expeditions. It takes more than grit and passion to launch an expedition; it takes money and equipment, both of which were in short supply. Hearing about the difficulty — she compared her fundraising to the fable of making stone soup — exemplifies how little funding ocean exploration receives. It’s impossible to imagine Neil Armstrong cobbling together funds to build Apollo 11 in the same way. After getting all of the funding, including a donation from Rolex, which also provided watches to test on the submersible’s manipulator arm, her dream came true. “We took it down off the coast of San Diego, and the satisfaction was having dreamed this up, having worked with the engineers and having started the company. And there was a submarine, and finally I got to drive it and go down under myself to 3,200 ft, which was the maximum depth it could go.” The companies who build this equipment, like Rolex and its diving watches, also need these expeditions to test their equipment. Earle has worn a Rolex since the 1970s, usually a fabulous gold Lady-Datejust; technically, it is not a diving watch, but that doesn’t stop Earle. “I wear this one a lot because I take it underwater, I take it in the shower, I take it to black-tie parties, I just don’t take it off. Except sometimes when I have a serious diving operation and then I use my Deepsea that goes to 4,000 meters. I don’t expect I will be outside at 4,000 meters, but if I drop the watch, I can get a submarine, go down and retrieve it, and it’ll be fine.” And that’s just the type of woman Earle is. She would hop in a submarine, descend into the ocean’s depths and bring it back up.