Growing up in Wichita, Kansas, Dr. Robert Ballard was inspired by Jules Verne's book, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, and tales of Captain Cook, Lewis and Clark and other explorers. Now, in an age when parents and teachers complain about kids spending too much time in front of a TV screen, the 50-year-old oceanographer has positively embraced today's technology to combat what he sees as a crisis in American science education by making science entertaining and thus inspiring a new generation of explorers.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of students around the world are enthralled by his Jason Project, a unique satellite audio and video hook-up with underwater robots, which Ballard calls telepresence, that enables youngsters to follow underwater expeditions as they happen. "It is, '' explains Ballard, "one big electronic field trip ... a giant game of Nintendo. This is their technology. They can relate to it.'' Nicknamed `Hollywood Bob' by fellow scientists, the director of the famed Centre for Marine Exploration at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts has become something of a multi-media industry. He has published more than 40 articles for publications such as National Geographic, Science and Nature. He is working on a sequel to Bright Shark, a novel he co-wrote with Tony Chiu, and Warner Communications is about to publish his latest book, The Lost Fleet of Guadalcanal, an account of his August 1992 expedition to locate and photograph 14 sunken Second World War battleships off the Pacific island. That expedition will be the subject of a National Geographic Explorer TV special on Memorial Day. In August he will explore the wreck of the Luisitania off Ireland and he is also working with top movie director Steven Spielberg and actor Roy Scheider on Seaquest, a 23-part one-hour action adventure series that will air on NBC this fall. "Education and entertainment are intertwined,'' says Ballard, a Navy veteran of the Vietnam war. "The best education is entertaining. It's enjoyable. I like to tell what I know in as many formats as I know how.'' Ballard conceived the idea of the Jason Project after discovering the wreck of the Titanic in 1986. The subsequent documentaries on National Geographic Explorer, articles in National Geographic and two books, brought him 16,000 letters from schoolchildren wanting to join him on his next expedition. Now, through the wonders of modern technology, they can.

Ballard had developed telepresence initially to enable scientists to cover more ground at great depths. He explains: "With a manned submarine, we can probably work three hours and cover about one and a half miles because you spend five hours going up and down. With Jason, you can work 24 hours a day.'' After the avalanche of mail following the Titanic expeditions, Ballard says: "I realised we could put this incredible robotic technology to work to excite students about the thrills of scientific discovery and even persude some of them to go into scientific and technology careers themselves. We're showing youngsters that oceanography is a contact sport and played by people with the `right stuff'!'' For Ballard, the Jason Education Foundation of which he is chairman, is important on several levels. Apart from the obvious educational benefits, it is a testing ground for the latest technology and, on a personal level, a passing of the torch.

"It's a sharing process. When you go through life, a lot of your life is about taking. At some point you start giving it back. I've got a chance to give back something I've been able to have. I've done over 60 expeditions in 30 years at sea. It's time to bring on the next generation.

"This generation will discover more of the earth than all previous generations put together. In 20 years, we've explored less than one tenth of one per cent of the Mid-Ocean Ridge, a mountain range bigger than the Himalaya, and covering 72,000 kilometres from the Arctic round to the Sea of Cortez.'' This year's Jason Project off Mexico, which explored hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor and studied gray whales, was broadcast outside North America for the first time to Bermuda, England and in Spanish to Mexico and boosted Jason's 1992 audience from about 400,000 to more than 700,000.

"I think this was the most ambitious and successful programme we've ever done,'' says Ballard, adding: "I really thank the people that made it happen in Bermuda. It's real investment in their youth.'' Ballard says for him the most exciting development of the 1993 expedition was how telepresence enabled scientists to perform more experiments than ever before. "Historically, a cruise on Alvin (Woods Hole's manned submersible) is 28 days and a scientist may make three dives in that time but becuase it takes him five hours to get down to 12,000 feet and back up each time, he probably only spends about three hours working. But now he doesn't have to wait - he can come to a downlink site, plug in his computer and say, `Let's go, guys'.

We then go off and conduct more than 30 hours of experiments for that scientist and he gets more data than ever before even though he didn't leave land. Because we don't have to bring the vehicle up as we would with a manned sub, we can service a tremendous amount of experiments that historically would have taken years.

"As a technologist I think it will have a significant impact on how experiments can be done in the future with telepresence. We'll get to see more of our planet in a way that is more cost efficient.'' With an eye ever on the future, Ballard sees the Jason Project as the beginnings of electronic travel. "Eventually you'll be able to have a Jason facility in your home and use it instead of a rental car to visit places. In the future there will be Hertz rental robots.'' If that sounds like a recipe for producing couch potato tourists, Ballard disagrees. "Imagine this,'' he says, pointing to a picture of the three-screen set-up for Jason viewers, "in your house but on a smaller scale. We have young people driving the robot by remote control in the Jason Project and in the future you'll be able to drive a car the same way. It will be a way people can access the world without leaving home. They could go to Mars, the Moon, or down to the Titanic - things they would not normally be able to do. Through Jason, I'm `taking' 700,000 kids down 9,000 feet into the ocean. I doubt whether ten of them will actually do that in their lifetime.'' Ballard also sees a role for Bermuda in an ambitious future project - a global electronic aquarium. He will return to Bermuda this year to conduct experiments with the Bermuda Biological Station in setting up underwater cameras on the world's majorreef systems that would relay continuous live pictures to electronic tanks in displays around the world.

The omnipresent Dr. Ballard (clockwise from top): Talkiing via satellite to Lord Young of Cable and Wireless at the Biological Station's downlink site; and chatting with student Argonaut Clay Sellers; preparing to go below in the DSV Turtle.

RG MAGAZINE MAY 1993