How is Narragansett like Houston, Texas? Dr. Robert Ballard makes this comparison: The scientific, technical, and engineering teams for his undersea expeditions will be based at URI's Bay Campus, making the place "like the space center at Houston." But in Narragansett, the world's oceans, not space, are the final frontier.

Since joining the faculty at the Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) last fall, Ballard, known for discovering the Titanic, has been busy. "I'm now the director of the Institute for Archeological Oceanography," he said recently, talking by cell phone while en route to URI on a Tuesday afternoon. "That was an important step." He's working with the university's humanities departments to establish a curriculum, and expects to start accepting students later this year. "There's no other program like this in the world," Ballard said. "This will be a unique, one-of-a-kind Ph.D. program, offering a degree in archeological oceanography."

His other priority is the creation of a remote-operated submersible called Hercules, which will be the first built to carry out deep-water excavation to archeological standards. "We're full throttle on that," Ballard says. Engineers at his Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Connecticut, and at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are working on it now, and some of the control systems are being built at URI. The $2 million vehicle should be ready to go for this summer's expedition in the Black Sea and Mediterranean.

"Ballard's work in the Black Sea is particularly interesting," says David Farmer, dean of the GSO. "The Black Sea has no oxygen in its deeper waters, and therefore anything that falls into it is going to be preserved. That raises many interesting possibilities." Previous expeditions in the region led by Ballard discovered vast numbers of ancient artifacts and shipwrecks. This summer, Hercules will help with undersea excavation. The trip also provides opportunities for URI faculty and students. "There are obvious synergies," says Farmer. "For example, [geology professor] Haraldur Sigurdsson will be studying underwater volcanoes when the ship passes an interesting area."

Farmer also expects Ballard to establish links with other universities and attract visiting professors to the Bay Campus. "Hercules will be coming here, along with his other equipment, at the end of the summer," Farmer says. "All of that instrumentation will be shared with the GSO, and will of course provide opportunities for other people who want to use it."

Ballard also envisions the GSO as the testing ground for his Inner Space Center. The center will use satellite communications and high-speed Internet technology to relay real-time digital video, sound, and data from Ballard's remote expeditions to scientists around the world. A prototype of the center will be constructed this summer on the Bay Campus, in conjunction with the Black Sea expedition. Ballard hopes to find a permanent home for the Inner Space Center in the planned expansion of the Pell Library. Funding has been secured for preliminary designs, Farmer says, and he hopes funding for the expansion will be forthcoming.

The Inner Space Center would further develop the "telepresence" techniques used in Ballard's educational JASON Project expeditions. For a preview of what the center might be like, several sessions of this year's JASON Project exploration of California's Channel Islands are open to the public, starting late this month. Tickets are available at $1 each for broadcasts on weekday afternoons January 27 to February 7, and throughout the day Saturday, February 1. For information, call (401) 874-6211. The programs take place in the Coastal Institute auditorium on the Bay Campus, where the prototype Inner Space Center will operate this summer.

Issue Date: January 3 - 9, 2003