Robert Ballard, best known for using fiber optic technology to find the wreckage of the Titanic, took his audience on a deep-sea adventure last night when he spoke at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium as part of the Kennedy Lecture Series.
Ohio University and elementary students, parents and professors turned out to see Ballard speak on his deep-sea explorations, which include over 120 expeditions.
"I'm just fascinated by the whole thing," said OU graduate student Kara Pike. "You always hear about Robert Ballard and see him on National Geographic; now is a time to see him in person," she said.
Ballard, who is the president of the Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Conn. and scientist emeritus in the Department of Applied Ocean Physics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, spoke of his deep-sea submarine explorations 20,000 ft. below the sea level.
His early adventures included the exploration of the 42,000-mile long Mid-Ocean Ridge in the summer of 1973. Ballard began mapping the ridge and found what others had expected to be a desert-line environment was actually a thermal blister on the earth's surface. This exploration helped to explain the fundamental questions about the chemistry of the world's oceans, he said.
These deep-sea explorations, which took Ballard 12 hours to travel back and forth each day, inspired him to develop telepresence, or unmanned submarines, he said.
Ballard applied fiber optic technology to a robot in an underwater vessel and used this technology to transmit video to ships at the water's surface. The U.S. Navy funded this research, which was named Argo.
"Using Argo you could put a vehicle down and leave it there, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Ballard said.
Ballard used telepresence to find the Titanic's North Atlantic wreckage.
In the first week after finding the Titanic, Ballard received 16,000 letters from children asking him how they could make oceanic discoveries, or if they could go on a deep-sea adventure with him, he said.
Ballard said he told them, "If you study science in school, I promise every year of my life that I will take you on an adventure." Ballard kept his promise by founding the JASON project, an interactive hands-on-science education program designed for elementary school students, which now is in its 14th year.
With more than 120, deep-sea explorations under his belt, Ballard will lead another adventure this summer, which will be broadcast live over the internet.
"Robert Ballard is a treasure, but, lucky for us, he is not a buried treasure," said Butch Hill, who introduced the Kennedy Lecture Series.
17 Archives
Erica Bush
200302252684midsize.jpg
Robert Ballard spoke yesterday at Templeton-Blackburn Memorial Auditorium about his deep-sea explorations. He discovered the Titanic remains and runs the JASON project.
