On exploring the oceans Robert Ballard

the first question is this our country

has to exploration programs one is NASA

with a mission to explore the great

beyond to explore the heavens which we

all want to go to if we’re lucky and you

can see we have Sputnik and we have a

Saturn and we have other manifestations

of space exploration well there’s also

another program that in another agency

within our government in ocean

exploration it’s in NOAA the National

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

and my question is this why are we

ignoring the oceans here’s the reason

not the reason but here’s why I asked

that question if you compare NASA’s

budget annual budget to explore the

heavens that’s one year budget would

fund NOAA’s budget to explore the oceans

for 1,600 years why why are we looking

up is it because it’s heaven and hell is

down here is it a cultural issue why are

people afraid of the ocean or do they

just assume the ocean is just a dark

gloomy place that has nothing to offer

I’m going to take you on a 16-minute

trip on 72% of the planet so buckle up

okay and what we’re going to do is we’re

going to immerse ourselves in my world

and what I’m going to try to I hope I

make the following points I’m going to

make it right now in case I forget is

everything I’m going to present to you

was not in my textbooks when I went to

school and most of it was not even my

college textbooks when I’ve on

geophysicist and and I all my earth

science books when I was a student I had

to give the wrong answer to get an A we

used to ridicule continental drift it

was something we laughed at we learned

to Marshall kaise jiya synclinal cycle

which is a bunch of crap but we in

today’s context it was a bunch of crap

but it was it was the law of geology

vertical tectonics all the things we’re

going to walk through in our

explorations and discoveries of the

oceans we’re mostly discoveries made by

accident

mostly discoveries made by accident we

were looking for something found

something else and everything we’re

going to talk about represents a 1/10 of

1% glimpse because that’s all we’ve seen

I have a characterization this is a

characterization of what it would look

like if you could remove the water it

gives you the false impression it’s a

map it is not a map fact I commonly ask

people have another version of my office

and I ask people why are there mountains

here on this area here but there none

over here and they go well it’s you’d

only try to be you know the same is it a

fracture zone is it a hotspot no no

that’s the only place of ship spin most

of the southern hemisphere is unexplored

we had more exploration ships down there

during Captain Cook’s time than now it’s

amazing all right so we’re going to

immerse ourselves in the 72% of the

planet because you know it’s really

naive to think that the Easter Bunny put

all the resources on the continents you

know it’s just ludicrous the we are

always constantly playing the zero-sum

game you know you know we’re going to do

this we’re going to take it away from

something else

I believe in just a rich in the economy

and and we’re leaving so much on the

table 72% of the planet and as I will

point out later in the presentation

50% of the United States of America lies

beneath the sea 50% of our country that

we own have all legal jurisdiction have

all rights to do whatever we want lies

beneath the sea and we have better maps

of Mars than that 50% why ok now

I began my explorations the hard way

back then this was actually my first

expedition was I was 17 years old was 49

years ago do the math I’m I’m 66 and I

went out to sea on a script ship and we

almost got sunk by a giant rogue wave

and I was too young to be it you know I

thought it was a great out of the body

surfer and I don’t walk that was an

incredible wave and we almost sank the

ship but I became enraptured with

mounting expeditions and over the last

49 years I’ve done about a hundred and

twenty twenty-one to keep doing them

expeditions but in the early days the

only way I could get to the bottom was

to crawl into a submarine a very small

submarine and go down to the bottom I

dove in a whole series of different deep

diving submersibles Alvin and see cliff

and Siana and all the major deep

submersibles we have which are about

eight in fact on a good day on a good

day we might have four or five human

beings at the average depth of the earth

maybe four or five human beings out of

whatever billions we’ve got going and so

it’s it’s very difficult to get there if

you do it physically but I was

enraptured back in my graduate years was

the dawn of plate tectonics and we

realized that the greatest mountain

range on earth lied beneath the sea the

mid-ocean ridge runs around like the

seaman of baseball this is on a on a

Makita projection but if you were to put

it on an equal area projection you’d see

that the mid-ocean ridge covers 23% of

the Earth’s total surface area almost a

quarter of our planet is a single

mountain range and we didn’t enter it

until after Neil Armstrong and Buzz

Aldrin went to the moon so we went to

the moon played golf up there before we

went to the largest feature on our own

planet and our interest in this mountain

ranges are scientists in those days was

not only because of its tremendous size

dominating the planet but the role it

plays in the genesis of the Earth’s

outer skin because it’s along the axis

of the mid-ocean ridge where the great

crustal plates are separating and like a

living organism you tear open it bleeds

its molten blood rises up to heal that

wound from the asthenosphere hardens

forms new tissue and moves laterally but

no one had actually gone down into the

actual site of boundary of creation as

we called it into the Rift Valley till a

group of seven of us

crawled in our little submarines in the

summer of 1973 1974 and we’re the first

human beings to enter the Great Rift

Valley we went down into the Rift Valley

this is the all accurate except for one

thing it’s pitch black

it’s absolutely pitch black because

photons cannot reach the average depth

of the ocean which is 12,000 feet in the

Rift Valley it’s 9,000 feet most of our

planet does not feel the warmth of the

Sun most of our planet is in eternal

darkness and in that for that reason you

do not have photosynthesis of the deep

sea with the absence of photosynthesis

you have no plant life and as a result

you have very little animal life living

in this underworld or so we thought and

so in our initial explorations we were

totally focused on exploring the

boundary of creation looking at the

volcanic features running along that

entire 42,000 miles running along this

entire 42,000 miles are tens of

thousands of active volcanoes tens of

thousands of active volcanoes there are

more active volcanoes beneath the sea

than on land by two orders of magnitude

so it’s a phenomenally active region

it’s not just a you know dark boring

place it’s a very alive place and it’s

then being ripped open but we were

dealing with a particular scientific

issue back then we couldn’t understand

why you had a mountain under tension we

in plate tectonic theory we knew that if

you had plates collide it made sense

they would they would crush into one

another you would thicken the crust

you’d uplift it that’s why you get you

know you get seashells up on Mount

Everest it’s not a flood it was pushed

up there

we understood mountains under

compression but we could not understand

why we had a mountain under tension

should not be until one of my colleagues

said it looks to me like a thermal

blister and the mid-ocean ridge must be

a cooling curve we said let’s go find

out we punched a bunch of heat probes

everything made sense except that the

axis there was missing heat there was

missing heat it was hot it wasn’t hot

enough so we came up with multiple

hypotheses there’s little green people

down there taking it there’s all sorts

of things going on but the only logical

was that there were hot springs that

there must be underwater hot springs we

mounted an expedition to look for the

missing heat and so we went along this

mountain range in an area along the

Galapagos rift and did we find the

missing heat it was amazing these giant

chimneys

huge giant chimneys went up to them with

our submersible we want to get a

temperature probe we stuck it in there

looked at it with pegged off-scale pilot

made this great observation that’s hot

then we realized our probe was made out

of the same stuff it could have melted

but it turns out the exiting temperature

with 650 degrees Fahrenheit hot enough

to melt lead this is what a real one

looks like on the one to Foucault Ridge

what you’re looking at is incredible

pipe organ of chemicals coming out of

the ocean everything you see in this

picture is commercial grade copper lead

silver zinc and gold so the Easter Bunny

has put things in the ocean floor and

you have massive heavy metal deposits

that we’re making in this mountain range

we’re making huge discoveries of large

commercial grade ore along this mountain

range but it was dwarfed was dwarfed by

what we discovered we discovered a

profusion of life in a world that it

should not exist giant tubeworms ten

feet tall I remember having to use vodka

my own vodka to pick a liquor they don’t

carry formaldehyde we went and found

these incredible clam beds sitting on

the barren Rock large clams and when we

opened them they didn’t look like a clam

and when we cut them open they didn’t

have the anatomy of a clan no mouth no

gut no digestive system they had inside

them their body said had been totally

taken over by another organism a

bacterium that had figured out how to

replicate photosynthesis in the dark

through a process we now call

chemosynthesis

none of it in our textbooks none of us

in our textbooks or that we did not know

about this life system we were not

predicting it we stumbled on it looking

for some missing heat so we wanted to

accelerate this process we wanted to get

away from the silly trip up and down on

a submarine average depth of the ocean

12,000 feet to an F hours to get to work

in the morning

two-and-a-half hours to get to home five

hour commute to work three hours of

bottom time average distance traveled

one mile on a 42,000 mile mountain range

great job security but not the way to go

so I began designing a new technology of

telepresence using robotic systems to

replicate myself so I wouldn’t have to

cycle my vehicle system we began to

introduce that in our explorations and

we continue to make phenomenal

discoveries with our new robotic

technologies again looking for something

else moving from one part of the

mid-ocean ridge to another we were

the scientists were off watch and they

came across incredible life-forms they

came across new creatures they had not

seen before but more importantly they

discovered edifices down there that they

did not understand that it did not did

not make sense they were not above a

magma chamber they shouldn’t be there

and we called it lost city and lost city

was characterized by these incredible

climb stone formations and upside down

of pools look at that how do you do that

that’s water upside down we we went in

underneath it tapped it and we found

that it had the pH of Drano the pH of 11

and yet it had chemosynthetic bacteria

living in it end at this extreme

environment enough hydrothermal vents

were in an acidic environment all the

way at the other end in an alkaline

environment at a pH of 11 a life existed

so life was much more creative than we

had ever thought again discovered by

accident just two years ago working off

Santorini where people are sunning

themselves on the beach unbeknownst to

them in caldera nearby we found

phenomenal hydrothermal vent systems and

another more life systems this was two

miles from where people go to sunbathe

and they were oblivious to the existence

of this system again you know we stopped

at the water’s edge recently diving off

in the Gulf of Mexico

finding a pools of water this time not

upside down right side up bingo it’s

it’s it’s out you think you’re in error

until your fish swims by you’re looking

at you’re looking at brine pools formed

by salt dye appears near that was

methane was I never seen volcanoes of

methane instead of belching out lava

they were belching out big big bubbles

of methane and they were creating these

volcanoes and there were flows not of

lava but of the mud coming out of the

earth but driven by meth never seen this

before moving on there’s more than just

natural history that beneath the sea

human history our discoveries of the

Titanic the realization that the

deep-sea is the largest museum on earth

it contains more history than all the

museum’s on land combined and yet we’re

only now penetrating it finding that the

state of preservation we found the

Bismarck in 16,000 feet

we then found the Yorktown people always

ask did you find the right ship this

said Yorktown on the stern more recently

finding ancient history

how many ancient mariners have had a bad

day the numbers of million we’ve been

discovering these along ancient trade

routes where they’re not supposed to be

the shipwrecks thanked hundred years

before the birth of Christ

this one sank carrying a prefabricated

home depot Roman temple and then here’s

one that sank at the time of Homer at

750 BC more recently into the Black Sea

where we’re exploring because there’s no

oxygen there it’s it’s it’s the largest

reservoir of hydrogen sulfide on earth

shipwrecks are perfectly preserved all

their organics are perfectly preserved

we begin to excavate them we expect to

start hauling out the bodies in perfect

condition with their DNA look at the

state of preservation still the ad mark

of a carpenter’s look at the state of

those artifacts you still see the

beeswax dripping when they drop they

sealed it this ship sank 1500 years ago

fortunately we’ve been able to convince

Congress we begin to go on the hill and

lobby and we stole recently a ship from

the United States Navy the Okeanos

Explorer in its mission its mission is

as good as you could get its mission is

to go where no one has gone before on

planet Earth and it’s I was looking at

it yesterday it’s up in Seattle okay it

comes online it comes online this summer

and it begins its journey of exploration

but we have no idea what we’re going to

find when we go out there with our

technology but certainly it’s going to

be going to the unknown America this is

at that part of the United States that

lies beneath the sea we own all of that

blue and yet like I say particularly the

west and territorial trust we don’t have

maps of them we don’t have maps of them

we have maps of Venus but not of the

western territorial trust the way we’re

going to run this we have no idea what

we’re going to discover we have no idea

what we’re going to discover going to

discover it an ancient shipwreck of

Phoenicians off Brazil or a new rock

formation a new life so we’re going to

run it like an emergency hospital we’re

going to connect our command center via

high bandwidth satellite link to a

building we’re building at the

University of Rhode Island called the

inner space Center

and within that we’re going to run it

just like you run a nuclear submarine

blew goal team switching them off and on

running 24 hours a day a discovery is

made that discovery is instantly seen in

the command center a second later but

then it’s connected through Internet to

the new internet highway that makes

internet one look like a dirt road on

the information highway with 10 gigabits

a bandwidth will go into areas we have

no knowledge of it’s a big blank sheet

on our planet will map it within hours

have the maps disseminated out to the

major universities it turns out that 90%

of all the oceanographic intellect in

this country are at 12 universities

they’re all on i2 we can then build a

command center this is a remote Center

at the University of Washington she’s

talking to the pilot

she’s 5,000 miles away but she’s assumed

command but the beauty of this too is we

can then disseminate it to children we

can disseminate they can follow this

expedition I’ve started a program thing

where you Jim Jim Young who helped we

start a program called the Jason project

more recently we’ve started a program

with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America

so that we can use exploration and and

the excitement of live exploration to

motivate them and excite them and then

give them what they’re already ready for

I would not let an adult drive my robot

you don’t have enough gaming experience

but I will let it kid with no license

take over control of my vehicle system

because we want to create we want to

create the classroom of tomorrow we have

stiff competition and we need to

motivate and it’s all being done if that

your win or lose an engineer or a

scientist by the eighth grade the game

is not over it’s over by the eighth

grade it’s not beginning we need to be

not only proud of our universities we

need to be proud of our middle schools

and when we have the best middle schools

in the world we’ll have the best kids

pumped out of that system let me tell

you because this is what we want

this is what we want this is a young

lady not watching a football game not

watching a basketball game watching

exploration live from thousands of miles

away and it’s just dawning on her what

she’s seen and when you get a jaw drop

you can inform you can put so much

information into that mind it’s in full

reset mode and that’s this this I hope

this I hope will be a future engineer or

a future scientist in the battlefield

for truth and my final question my final

question why are we not looking at

moving out onto the sea why do we have

programs to build a habitation on Mars

and we have programs to look at

colonizing the moon but we do not have a

program looking at how we colonize our

own planet and the technology is at hand

thank you very much

thank you thank you