Talking with Bob Ballard, the oceanographer who discovered the sunken Titanic in the North Atlantic in 1985, he can sound a little dismissive of that particular blip on his career sonar — possibly because he’s been asked about it for so long. “Finding the Titanic was like talking through two tin cans and a string, compared to the technology we have now,” he tells us during a Zoom talk from his ship, E/V Nautilus, where he’s preparing for his next adventure, as well as an upcoming National Geographic special airing July 6. Ballard is not all about the Titanic, though his discovery of the sunken vessel in 1985 brought him immediate world fame. Understandably, he wants the world to know he’s had many other adventures in life, and in fact, all of life is an adventure if you’re curious enough. In the NatGeo special, we learn how, as a young Woods Hole oceanographer, his group’s early submersible discoveries “threw out” the biology books (when he discovered hydrothermal events under the sea), the chemistry books (discovering “black smokers” and chemosynthesis), as well as the geology books (developing the theory of plate tectonics). This is hard science stuff. His work was, and is, on the vanguard.

Garceau, S. (2021, June 26). Discovering the ocean's deepest mysteries beyond the 'Titanic'. The Philippine Star, p. C2.