Titanic Dream Fulfilled

Ocean Education
(Source:"Enrich" By:John Dizon)

Three years before earning college degrees in chemistry and geology at the University of California in Santa Barbara, Ballard worked part-time courtesy of his father on what turned out to be a failed effort to build a submersible named Alvin at the ocean systems group of north American aviation. After marrying, he worked on a doctorate in marine geology at the University of Southern California before being drafted into three-years, active military service. He served in the U.S navy as an oceanographer, liaising with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in massachusetts, where he continued working following his U.S navy tour. There, he persuaded scientists to fund and use Woods Hole's Alvin for undersea research. Four years later, he received PhD in marine geology and geophysics at the University of Rhode Island Ballard's first dives were routine--a field-mapping project of the Gulf of Maine to determine the structure and topography of the ocean floor and collect samples from the seabed; an unsuccessful French-American expedition which searched for a hydrothermal vents spewing black smoke from the Mid-Atlantic ridge; and a second attempt that took accurate temperature readings of 350 degrees Celsius (662 degree F), confirming the existence of this "black smokers".