Biography

The Center for Ocean Exploration (COE) works in collaboration with the Ocean Exploration Trust (OET), which Dr. Ballard founded in 2009. OET owns and operates the E/V NAUTILUS one of two of America’s ships of exploration funded by NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. A major component of this joint effort is using high bandwidth satellite links to connect ships at sea with a telecommunications hub at GSO called the Inner Space Center (ISC). ISC serves a dual role for COE. The first is to make it possible for scientists ashore to participate via “tele-presence” in real time exploration as it happens. The second is to support a variety education outreach effort.

A native of Kansas, Ballard received his undergraduate from the University of California, Santa Barbara in Geology and Chemistry and his doctorate from GSO in 1975 before spending 30 years at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. There he helped develop deep submersibles and remotely operated vehicle systems, after which he returned to his alma mater and generated even more interest in GSO among a public that is fascinated by the mysteries of the deep.

Ballard came to instant public fame in 1985, of course, as the discoverer of the final resting place of the ill-fated R.M.S Titanic, followed by the German Battleship BISMARCK and numerous ancient shipwrecks. Having said that Dr. Ballard prefers to be known for the discovery of the first hydrothermal vents and their exotic chemosynthetic animal communities in the Galapagos Rift in1977 followed in 1979 with the discovery of high temperature “Black Smokers” on the East Pacific Rise in 1979.