New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
INTO THE DEEP
Famed undersea explorer Robert Ballard, who discovered the Titanic, takes stock of his adventures in a new memoir while planning his biggest yet
From a command center in an undisclosed location in Connecticut, Robert Ballard can reach out and touch the deepest depths of the ocean.
The 45 glowing display screens connect him to his ship, EV Nautilus, which he recently used to search for Amelia Earhart’s plane. His ship bears the namesake of Captain Nemo’s ship from “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” a movie that captivated him as a young boy and spurred him toward a life of nautical adventures.
“I stand in the middle of the room when I’m in the heat of the battle ... working in a world where I’m receiving sensory information from sonars, cameras, digital data, maps,” said Ballard, a Lyme resident. “I form an image in my mind, and I’m comfortable.”
Ballard gives a deep look into how dyslexia helps his quest for discovery in his new book, “Into the Deep: A Memoir From the Man Who Found Titanic,”
which was released last week. The legendary ocean explorer said he wrote the book, which discusses everything from his childhood to discovering the Titanic to his quest to find Earhart’s plane, because he was at the right time in his career to do so.
The 78-year-old said his organization, the Ocean Exploration Trust, was recently awarded a large federal grant to explore
“the 50 percent of the United States that lies beneath the sea.” He said that mission will last at least 10 years.
“It was just the perfect time to say, ‘OK, before we embark upon what is really the second Lewis and Clark Expedition of America’... I wanted to really put a bow around a heck of a career, so that I really felt I was ready to go on my next adventure,” he said.
Ballard said the book, which spans his childhood to the discovery of the Titanic, and his search for Earhart’s airplane, was an effort for people to get to know him. The personal account of Ballard’s journey takes readers through topics such his son dying in a car accident in 1989 to him realizing he has dyslexia.
“It was tough,” he said. “There were a lot of tears. It got very personal.”
Ballard discussed at length the impact of discovering he was dyslexic.
“I didn’t know I was dyslexic,” he said. “I knew I was different. I knew I had a different wiring. I just accepted that we’re all different and that I go down a road less traveled. But it was when my daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia that I poured myself into it.”
Ballard was already in his 70s when he found out he was dyslexic, and said he cried as he read the book “The Dyslexic Advantage.”
“It was telling me who I was,” he said. “So many people with dyslexia don’t talk about it. You’re told by the non-dyslexic world you have to live in that you’re stupid — and you’re not.”
Ballard said his different way of thinking helped his career, pointing out an instance during his second expedition to the Titanic where he went underwater and his equipment failed.
“Our sonar went out. Our nav system went out. The pilot is saying ‘Bob, we’re lost. I don’t know where we are,’ ” he said. “We have nothing, but the window — and it’s black. I said, ‘Keep going.’ ”
When they got to the bottom, Ballard said, he closed his eyes and pictured where they were and pointed to the Titanic’s location.
“That’s my dyslexic gift,” he said. “I don’t know how I do it, but I did it. Sure enough, it was over there.”
Ballard said following in the footsteps of his brother, Richard, who was an experimental physicist, could be a challenge as a child. He said teachers would realize quickly he was not as smart as his older sibling.
“I had to really struggle to get good grades,” he said. “I got straight As, almost, in high school, but I got them by staying up late and spending a massive amount of time working.”
Ballard said growing up with this mindset also pushed him to diversify his skill set.
“Instead of majoring in physics, I just majored in physics, chemistry, geology — I took a quadruple major,” he said. “I went into sports. I went into the ROTC. I became student president. I developed what I call my Swiss army knife.”
Branching out into so many different worlds, Ballard said, gave him the ability to get along with people from a variety of subsets of society.
“I’m able to go into the Pentagon and act like a commander of naval intelligence,” he said. “I’m able to go to a faculty meeting and act like a PhD. I’m able to go on television as the host of National Geographic and be a communicator and storyteller.”
The new book is also a love letter to the ocean, Ballard said, adding he has learned a lot of lessons from the sea. From almost dying on his first expedition, he said he immediately learned the ocean can not be pushed around.
“I go to sea because I’m humbled by this force,” he said. “When you’re in a hurricane or when you get hit by a rogue wave and you go under the ocean ... that’s pretty awesome. You do fall in love with it, but you’re also deeply respectful of its power.”
Ballard said he wanted readers of his book to grow more appreciative of the ocean and all it has to offer. He conceded that many people find outer space more interesting than the depths of the ocean.
“That’s where god is,” he said. “God is up there. Where I go is the devil. I go down, not up. It’s cultural too. I’m in a world of total darkness. There are no galaxies to look at. Where I go, it’s pitch black. The surface of the earth has never felt the warmth of the sun.”
Ballard said the ocean is overlooked, noting it has the largest mountain ranges in the world, tens of thousands of active volcanoes and canyons that make the Grand Canyon “look like a ditch.”
Through their work, Ballard said, he and the people he works with are trying to make the ocean more important to everyone.
“Because, there’s no plan B for the human race,” he said. “We’re not going to move the human race to Mars. We can’t escape our solar system. We’re on planet Earth folks, and we need to come to grips with it.”