down in the Atlantic Ocean, yesterday likened the experience to "seeing the walls of Troy''.

And referring to wrecks off Bermuda's coast, Dr. Robert Ballard told The Royal Gazette some of these sites could eventually become underwater museums and valuable tourist attractions.

There was "a lot of history in the sea'' that deserved protection, he said.

Dr. Ballard, whose 1985 discovery of the Titanic has been compared with man's walk on the moon, is at the Bermuda Biological Station to promote his latest brainchild, the "Jason'' project.

Over 2,000 Bermuda school children will join 700,000 others in a giant satellite hook-up to participate in a hands-on experiment of undersea exploration.

Dr. Ballard said it was his discovery of the Titanic that led to the concept of "Jason''.

"I had about 16,000 kids write to me about the Titanic and it was impossible to reply to all of them. But I was very anxious to encourage these children's interest.'' Saying he was pleased that Bermuda students would be able to join in his project, aimed at rousing interest in science as a career, Dr. Ballard commented: "There is not much left to explore on earth. But the pyramids of the deep are just being found!'' He said preliminary results showed his project was already having a big impact on children's attitude to science.

"We are also targeting teachers. Eighty five percent of science teachers have no background in math, physics or chemistry. We have to capture children young,'' he said, adding that "Jason'' showed in a practical way, how mathematics and science formed interlocking bridges that could lead to "all kinds'' of exciting careers in science.

Children brought up on video games, said Dr. Ballard, had been fascinated by a submarine called Alvin and a robot called JJ that tracked down the final resting place of the Titanic .

"But this was not fiction. This was real, children had seen JJ make its way down the grand staircase of the Titanic , and they all wanted to go on the next expedition!'' Advances in exploration technology meant that remote-controlled cameras, such as those used in "Jason'' could now film underwater territory never seen by man.

This latest project is another milestone in the career of one of the world's most celebrated scientists.

Also the discoverer of the German battleship Bismarck , Dr. Ballard plans an August exploration of the Lusitania , torpedoed off the coast of Ireland in World War I.

But it is the dramatic story of the doomed passenger liner, eventually found some 73 years after that fateful night, that still captures the world's attention. After hitting an iceberg, the largest ship in the world had sunk beneath the icy waves with about 1,500 people still on board.

Describing the moment when he first saw the mighty ship lying on the ocean floor, Dr. Ballard told The Royal Gazette : "It was very quiet and still down there. There was no sign of any wreckage and it got a bit monotonous, gazing out of Alvin's window. Then there was a clump of mud, about the size of a fist, then more and more, getting bigger and bigger, and we realised it was the the splatter caused when the bow hit bottom. Then we saw a huge pile of marine `snow'. And suddenly, just behind it, about 20 feet away, we suddenly saw this great wall of steel. It was the bow of the Titanic .'' Asked if he was ever nervous in his nine trips down to the wreck, Dr. Ballard replied: "One day we were so busy looking out of the front window, we forgot to check the back. As I turned round, I saw that we were about to smash into one of the huge, bronze capstans still in place on the bow. That scared the hell out of me! And it gave me a fright when I saw just the head of a doll lying on the ocean floor. It looked so ghostly.'' Dr. Ballard, who studied "miles'' of black and white film footage of the disaster, said this hardly prepared him for the shock of looking out of Alvin's window and seeing it all in living colour: "In a flash, the whole thing becomes real!'' Dr. Robert Ballard.