The man who found the Titanic is on a new quest, says an article on CNN.
“The man who found Titanic”
In a career that’s spanned more than 60 years, Robert Ballard has conducted over 150 underwater expeditions and made countless significant scientific discoveries.
But the renowned oceanographer says he’s made peace with the fact that he will probably always be known as “the man who found Titanic.”
According to Ballard, his mother predicted he’d never be able to escape that “rusty old boat” when he called to tell her he’d located the famous shipwreck in 1985.
From the past
In his upcoming memoir, “Into The Deep,” Ballard recalls walking into the premiere of the 1997 movie “Titanic” with the film’s director James Cameron, who turned to him and said: “You go first. You found it.” “Moms are always right,” he tells. “I’m sure my obituary is written ‘man who found the Titanic died today.’ “In many ways, it’s sort of freed me up to dream other dreams. So I feel emancipated in many ways.” And those “other dreams” are still evolving after decades of exploring the deep sea. “When kids ask me ‘what’s your greatest discovery,’ I always tell them ‘it’s the one that I’m about to make,” he says.
Although Ballard accepts he’s unlikely to add another 100 expeditions to his tally, he plans to “keep knocking off a few” while he’s still able to.
He delves into his astonishing career in the memoir released later this month, and also opens up about some of the most defining moments in his personal life, including the tragic death of his son.
“I turn 79 in June. This was just the perfect time [to tell my story,]” he says of the book, which was written with the help of New York Times investigative journalist Christopher Drew. “And we had the pandemic, I wasn’t going to sea. I had a lot of time on my hands.”
Ballard’s fascination with the ocean began at an early age. By the time he was 12, he’d decided he wanted to be Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s classic science fiction novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” when he grew up. “That was the seminal moment when I decided I wanted to be not only an oceanographer but a naval officer,” he says. “Something which I’ve never really talked about a lot is that I’m dyslexic and that I learn differently. I didn’t read ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,’ I watched the movie produced by Disney.”
Education
Ballard went on to gain degrees in both chemistry and geology and a Master’s in geophysics from the University of Hawaii. After being called for military action in 1965, he transferred to the US Navy and assigned to the Deep Submergence Group at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where he helped to develop Alvin, a three-person submersible with a mechanical arm. He spent much of the seventies exploring the ocean in Alvin, reaching 2,750 meters to explore the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, as well as joining an expedition that uncovered thermal vents in the Galapagos Rift.
Searching for Amelia
In 2019, Ballard led an expedition on a mission to solve the mystery of the disappearance of aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan in 1937. He and his team, which now includes his daughter Emily, spent two weeks searching for the wreckage of the Lockheed Electra around Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island that forms part of the Micronesian nation of Kiribati. While they were unable to unearth any sign of the plane, Ballard says he hasn’t given up, pointing out that he didn’t find the Titanic on his first attempt. “National Geographic is sponsoring me to go at it [finding the wreckage] again next year,” he says.
“So stay tuned on that one. She’s there. It’s not like I’m looking for the Loch Ness monster, although I did do that.” But Ballard admits that the vastness of Nikumaroro “presents a host of problems.” “I’m waiting for newer technologies, a brighter day, a calmer sea,” he adds. “It might not be me who finds Amelia. It might be Emily [his daughter] or someone else in a coming generation. “Or maybe Amelia will never be found, yet all we learned searching for her will lead to some other discovery.”
While his list of career achievements, which include helping to confirm the concept of plate tectonics, is pretty extraordinary, Ballard considers discovering hydrothermal vent ecosystems and ultimately redefining our understanding of the origin of life to be the most significant. “That was clearly a seminal discovery,” he notes.
