Easton Press Robert Ballard books
Who is Robert Ballard?
Ballard grew up in Pacific Beach, San Diego, California. He has attributed his early interest in underwater exploration to reading the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, living by the ocean in San Diego, and his fascination with the groundbreaking expeditions of the bathyscaphe Trieste.Ballard began working for Andreas Rechnitzer's Ocean Systems Group at North American Aviation in 1962 when his father, Chet Ballard, the chief engineer at North American Aviation's Minuteman missile program, helped him get a part-time job. When Ballard first joined North American, he worked with Rechnitzer on North American's failed proposal to build the submersible Alvin for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
In 1965, Ballard graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, earning undergraduate degrees in chemistry and geology. While a student in Santa Barbara, California, he joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and also completed the US Army's ROTC program, giving him an Army officer's commission in Army Intelligence. His first graduate degree (MS, 1966) was in geophysics from the University of Hawaii's Institute of Geophysics where he trained porpoises and whales to make a living. After getting married, Ballard returned to Andreas Rechnitzer's Ocean Systems Group at North American Aviation.
Ballard was working towards a Ph.D. in marine geology at the University of Southern California in 1967 when he was called to active duty. Upon his request, Ballard was transferred from the Army into the US Navy as an oceanographer. The Navy assigned Ballard as a liaison between the Office of Naval Research and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
After leaving the Navy in 1970, Ballard continued working at Woods Hole persuading organizations and people, mostly scientists, to fund and use Alvin for undersea research. Four years later Ballard received a Ph.D. in marine geology and geophysics at the University of Rhode Island.
Ballard's first dive in a submersible was in the Ben Franklin (PX-15) in 1969 off the coast of Florida during a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution expedition. In the summer of 1970 , Ballard began a field mapping project of the Gulf of Maine for his doctoral dissertation. The project used an air gun that sent shock waves underwater to determine the underlying structure of the ocean floor and the submersible Alvin which was used to find and recover a sample from the bedrock.
During the summer of 1975, Ballard participated in a joint French-American expedition called Phere searching for hydrothermal vents over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but the expedition did not find any active vents. A 1979 expedition was aided by deep-towed still camera sleds that were able to take pictures of the ocean floor, making it easier to find the vent locations.
When Alvin inspected one of the sites they located, the scientists observed black smoke billowing out of the vents, something not observed at the Galápagos Rift. Ballard and geophysicist Jean Francheteau went down in Alvin the day after the black smokers were first observed. They were able to take an accurate temperature reading of the active vent (the previous dive's thermometer had melted), and recorded 350 °C (662 °F). Ballard and Francheteau continued searching for more vents along the East Pacific Rise between 1980 and 1982.
Robert Ballard quotes
"The greatest ocean in the world is the one we haven't explored yet."
"The thing about the deep sea is that it's been stable for millions of years. It's our home, but it's an alien world."
"We know more about the surface of Mars and the Moon than we do about the bottom of the ocean."
"Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation drives economic growth. So, let's all go exploring."
"The ocean is Earth's last great unexplored frontier, and we know much less about what lies beneath the surface than we do about the moon, Mars, or the farthest reaches of space."
"Exploration is not a choice, really; it's an imperative."
"Technology is allowing us to reach deeper and deeper into the ocean. Every time we go there, we find new species, new chemical processes, and new organisms."
"Every shipwreck is a time capsule, holding clues to our maritime history, culture, and the human experience."
"The ocean is not too big to explore; it's too big not to explore."
"Our knowledge of the oceans has doubled every decade since the 1960s, leading to an explosion of new discoveries and understanding."
Source and additional information: Robert Ballard