Dr. Ballard

..follow the light.

Growing up, the only Dr. Ballard that I knew of was the guy who branded the dog food cans - premium dog food cans.

Dr. Robert Ballard is much cooler than that. He is an Oceanographer by trade and famous for his dives on the Titanic and Bismarck.

As we saw in class and on Dr. Conrad's class blog, he is also quite the inspirational public speaker. I had the opportunity to see him at a conference and he gave a similar talk to the one we saw on the video. It was better live. I think this is because he went a little slower, was more emphatic and he really engaged the audience. What struck me most, in watching the video, is that these guys - the giants in their field - spend tremendous amounts of time traveling, speaking both to inspire and generate support for their missions. He was fine tuning the talk all the while. When I saw him, he added bits of humour and references to NOAA and hydrography. In the video, he spoke of ocean colonization. In both, he used the line that we have better maps of Mars then of the Ocean floor - because NASA's budget is huge compared to budgets for undersea exploration.That is a powerful point. The most moving image was the shot of the university student with the look of wonder on her face. It was great stuff and a great reminder that salemanship is another skill that the giants of ocean science possess.

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/edu/oceanage/05ballard/welcome.html