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(CNN) -
During his more than 60-year career, Robert Ballard undertook more than 150 underwater expeditions and made countless important scientific discoveries.
But the renowned oceanographer says he made peace with the fact that he will likely always be known as "the man who found the Titanic."
According to Ballard, his mother predicted that he would never be able to escape from that "old rusty ship" when he called to tell her that he had located the famous shipwreck in 1985.
In his upcoming memoirs, "Into The Deep," Ballard recalls entering the 1997 release of the movie "Titanic" with the film's director, James Cameron, who turned to him and said, "You go first.
You found it".
"Mothers are always right," he tells CNN Travel.
"I'm sure my obituary will say something like" The man who found the Titanic died today. "
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In many ways it has freed me to dream other dreams.
So I feel emancipated in many ways.
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And those "other dreams" continue to evolve after decades of exploring the deep sea.
"When children ask me 'what is your greatest discovery', I always tell them 'this is what I am about to make,'" he says.
Although Ballard admits that he is unlikely to add another 100 expeditions to his account, he plans to "keep doing some" while he can.
Oceanographer Robert Ballard celebrates the discovery of the Titanic with photographer Emory Kristof in 1985.
Credit: Emory Kristof / National Geographic Image Collection
In her memoirs, due out later this month, she delves into her amazing career, and also opens up about some of the most defining moments in her personal life, such as the tragic death of her son.
«I turn 79 years old in June.
It was the perfect time [to tell my story], ”he says of the book, written with the help of
New York Times
investigative journalist
Christopher Drew.
“With the pandemic, I was not going to go out to sea.
I had a lot of free time.
Ballard's fascination with the ocean began at a young age.
At the age of 12, he had already decided that he wanted to be Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's classic science fiction novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" when he grew up.
"That was the crucial moment when I decided that I wanted to be not only an oceanographer, but also a naval officer," he says.
“Something that I have never talked about much is that I am dyslexic and that I learn differently.
I did not read 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea', but I saw the film produced by Disney.
Ballard earned degrees in chemistry and geology and a master's degree in geophysics from the University of Hawaii.
In 1965, after being called up for military service, he joined the U.S. Navy and was assigned to the Deep Dive Group at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he helped develop the Alvin, a three-person submersible with a mechanical arm.
He spent much of the 1970s exploring the ocean on the Alvin, reaching 2,750 meters to explore the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, as well as joining an expedition that discovered thermal vents in the Galapagos Fault.
Voyage to the Titanic
By now he was ready to take on the daunting task of trying to locate the UK passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912.
Although Ballard admits he was never a "Titanic fanatic," he became obsessed with finding the wreck after witnessing several failed attempts by other explorers.
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"The Titanic was clearly the great Mount Everest at the time," he explains.
Many others had tried.
Many that I thought would have been successful, or should have been but didn't. '
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In October 1977 he made his first attempt to locate the ship, using the deep-sea salvage vessel Seaprobe, a drillship with sonar equipment and cameras attached to the end of the drill pipe.
However, Ballard was forced to admit defeat when the drill pipe broke.
Once he returned from the expedition, he began developing robots that could roam the ocean floor collecting images and information.
"The Titanic was actually the first time we used this kind of technology," he explains.
"In all the previous expeditions, I physically got into the submarines."
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“Getting there [the deepest ocean] took two and a half hours.
So it's a five hour drive.
I went down 6,000 meters once, which took me six hours and almost killed me. "
Once Ballard felt secure with robotic submersible technology, he knew he could go back on site and study the ocean floor for hours on end without having to get into a submarine.
But there was the small problem of obtaining the necessary financing to support such an expensive and important expedition.
It was only in recent years that Ballard was able to be completely honest about the now-declassified events that led to his discovery of the wreck.
The expedition was part of a secret US military mission to recover two wrecked nuclear submarines, the Thresher and the Scorpion, which had sunk to the bottom of the North Atlantic.
In 1998, Ballard and his team found the wreckage of the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier 56 years after its sinking.
(Credit: David Doubilet / National Geographic Image Collection)
Before accepting the mission, which was approved by then US President Ronald Reagan, he asked if he could search for the Titanic when he had completed the top-secret task.
Although he was never explicitly granted permission to search the wreck, Ballard claims he was told he could do pretty much whatever he wanted once he had found the nuclear submarines.
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"I have to say it was difficult for me because I couldn't tell the truth for many, many, many years about who actually paid for this," he admits.
«It was a confidential mission in which I participated in the middle of the Cold War.
We were facing the Soviet Union and this [the search for the Titanic] was a cover.
After completing the mission with 12 days to spare, Ballard and his team set out in search of the Titanic in the Argo, an offshore vehicle with a remote-controlled camera that transmitted live images from the seabed to a control room in the Knorr, the tow research vessel they were on.
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On September 1, 1985, they found out that they had located the wreckage of the sunken ship that struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland during its maiden voyage.
What he felt after discovering the Titanic
Although he initially welcomed the discovery, the enormity of the tragedy, which killed more than 1,500 people, quickly overwhelmed Ballard and everyone aboard the Knorr.
"Around two in the morning, someone commented that we were approaching the time of night when the Titanic had sunk in a sea as calm as we have now," he writes in "Into the Deep."
“It was not until this moment that the emotion of the tragedy hit me completely.
I know it sounds weird, but it was quite unexpected.
I've never been a Titanic fanatic.
Sure, he had wanted to find him, and he had been very competitive at that.
But a world tragedy happened in that place, and now the place itself has taken hold of me.
His emotion filled me and never left me.
Ballard goes on to describe his horror at the "Titanic mania," which was sparked when the location of the wreck was made public and "investors saw dollar signs."
"Without realizing it, we had opened all this when we found the wreck, and it had become an ugly carnival, an insult to the fate of the Titanic and all those who lost their lives in its last hours," he writes.
Underwater museum plans
The explorer and his team returned to the Titanic in 1986 to photograph every inch of the wreck.
Credit: Robert Ballard and Martin Bowen / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
In the years after the ship was found, Ballard met several of the survivors, many of whom were just babies when it sank, and says he is honored to be "part of that history."
Although he thinks they should leave the place alone, he understands why people are so desperate to see him.
That's why he plans to create underwater museums for both the Titanic and its sister ship, the Britannia, which sank in the Aegean Sea in 1916, so that visitors can travel to both shipwrecks electronically.
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"We have the technology that makes it possible to literally hook onto the Titanic," he explains.
'So I'm very confident that in a decade we will be able to do it.
Because it's not going anywhere.
They say it's falling apart
But it's not like that.
He is being loved to death by visitors more than Mother Nature is attacking him.
After the Titanic, Ballard discovered the remains of John F. Kennedy's WWII patrol ship, the German battleship Bismarck, and several ancient ships in the Black Sea.
But he says he has barely scratched the surface when it comes to all the sunken ships out there.
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"If we add them up, maybe I have found 100 [shipwrecks], which is more than anyone else," he admits.
"But the United Nations says there are more than three million shipwrecks in the ocean."
In Search of Amelia
Ballard deployed the Hercules remotely operated vehicle (ROV) while searching for Amelia Earhart's plane in 2019.
Credit: Jesse Goldberg / National Geographic Image Collection
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.
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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 is part of the Micronesian nation of Kiribati.
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Although they were unable to unearth any sign of the plane, Ballard says he has not given up, noting that he did not find the Titanic on his first attempt.
"National Geographic is sponsoring me to look for the plane wreck again next year," he says.
So stay tuned for that.
Is there.
Not that I'm looking for the Loch Ness Monster, although I already did.
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But Ballard admits that Nikumaroro's vastness "raises a lot of problems."
"I'm looking forward to new technologies, a brighter day, a calmer sea," he adds.
I may not be the one to find Amelia.
It could be Emily [his daughter] or someone else in a next generation.
Or maybe Amelia will never be found, but all we've learned looking for her will lead us to some other discovery.
Although the list of his career accomplishments, which includes helping to confirm the concept of plate tectonics, is quite extraordinary, Ballard believes that discovering hydrothermal vent ecosystems and ultimately redefining our understanding of the origin of life is the most significant.
"That was clearly a seminal discovery," he says.
The next generation
His ship Nautilus is named after Captain Nemo's submarine ship in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."
(Credit: Gabriel Scarlett / National Geographic Image Collection)
Although always looking for "the next door to open," these days the 78-year-old devotes his energies to guiding the next generation of explorers, regularly lecturing on exploring the oceans in schools.
"I love children," he explains.
"I remember when I came home after finding the Titanic, I received 16,000 letters from children around the world saying, 'Next time you go, can I go with you?" He says.
“I tell the next generation that they are going to explore more of the Earth than all previous generations put together.
So the age of exploration has just begun with this technology.
I feel some envy, because I would love to live another 100 years.
But I don't think I will.
However, he is more than satisfied with their contributions and says that he is proud to have laid the foundation for future ocean explorers to take on even greater challenges.
"I was raised with sayings, and my favorite is one my grandmother gave me: 'Great is the person who sits in a tree knowing that he will never sit in its shade,'" he says.
And that's what I'm trying to do with the next generation of explorers.
I will not sit in the shade of your trees.
Although he may be taking a back seat, Ballard is still in the center of the action.
More than a decade ago, you made the decision to get your own boat after "using other people's for many, many years" and now, at last, you have the equipment and technology installed the way you originally envisioned.
"We call it the 'scout corps,' and that team is now really in place," he explains.
I'll go sailing.
The ship is in dry dock right now.
They are enlarging my entire rear because I have a lot of new toys that I want to play with.
Ballard's 64-meter research ship Nautilus takes its name from Captain Nemo's submarine ship in the classic story that inspired him to "dream big."
He and his team of explorers often broadcast their encounters live while conducting scientific explorations of the seabed with underwater vehicles.
"That's my Nautilus, right there," he says, pointing to a satellite image of the ship behind him.
And he's waiting for me.
“You have to dream big to make a difference in this life, and I plan to continue dreaming.
A world of discoveries still awaits me.
- "Into the Deep: A Memoir from the Man Who Found Titanic" will be released on May 11th. National Geographic will premiere the hour-long documentary "Bob Ballard: An Explorer's Life" on June 14.
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