- I'm the king of the world!

- [Pamela] Bob Ballard's most remarkable discovery inspired the classic Academy Award-winning movie "Titanic".

- I'm really an earth scientist, but it turns out that most of the planet is under the ocean.

So I'm studying my planet, but in the meantime, bump into things.

- Things such as the real Titanic.

In 1985, Ballard became world famous from his discovery of its remains and the film that followed.

- I'm flying, Jack.

- Ballard says he's seen the movie only a couple of times.

The first with its creator, Jim Cameron.

- I knew that, what I say, the old lady in her grave, I know what the old lady looked like.

Jim so accurately replicated it.

I got to see the beautiful ship that she was.

- The largest ocean liner of its time hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage in 1912 and sank off Newfoundland.

More than 1,500 died in the disaster.

Just recently, the haunting original video of the watery grave was re-released.

But beyond Titanic, Ballard is like the Lewis and Clark of the Sea, on a mapping expedition of what he believes is the next frontier.

His voyage of discovery began when the compass pointed him in the direction of the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography more than a half century ago.

Dr. Ballard, you are oceanographer, explorer, adventurer.

You are a Naval Intelligence Officer and Commander, archeologist, author, professor, of all of these titles, which one describes you best?

- Oh, I love an explorer.

I boldly go where no one has gone before on planet Earth.

You can't have a better job than that.

- [Pamela] That job of a lifetime started to take shape when he was introduced as a child to Jules Verne's classic tale.

- I didn't read the book "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", I went and saw the movie when I was 12 years old.

- [Pamela] He says he watched the movie because he couldn't read well.

Ballard has what's known as a learning difficulty but he views it differently.

- I'm dyslexic and I'm very proud of it.

I see things people don't see.

See, I live in a world of complete darkness and so I have to imagine it.

And dyslexics have a powerful ability to form visual imaging in our right side of our brain.

- I gotta stop you there because you have been extraordinarily successful in life.

How did you navigate dyslexia to make the discoveries you've made?

- Well, I did good in school, but I had to memorize everything.

And I would go in to take the exam, close my eyes and see the answer.

- So you see dyslexia as an advantage?

- It's a gift if you go down the right road.

And there's this new research that says dyslexics make great explorers.

We're not afraid of the unknown.

My daughter, who's dyslexic, gave me a little thing for my deck it says, "Not all who wander are lost."

- [Pamela] Ballard credit's dyslexia with helping him envision where the Titanic was located.

- I had to dream up a way of finding it, which was to imagine its sinking.

Dumping out its remains.

Falling down, but then they would be carried by the current.

So I said, let's not look for the Titanic.

Let's look for its footprint.

Let's look for the debris that came off of it.

- [Pamela] Searching for the Titanic was not Ballard's original intent.

It was a cover story for a recently declassified top secret military mission.

At the time the Navy was concerned, two US nuclear subs that had been lost during the Cold War would be found by the Russians.

So they asked Ballard to find them.

If he did, the Navy said he could use the rest of his resources to search for Titanic.

He found the subs and- - Guess what's in the middle?

The Titanic.

And the only reason I found it was because of that fact, that there was flanked by two nuclear submarines.

- [Pamela] Using his newly developed technology, an unmanned submersible vehicle sent back live pictures in the dead of night, finally detecting evidence of the long lost ship of dreams.

- We were in the debris field, we knew immediately to turn north.

And then the boiler of the Titanic came in and we had a photograph of that boiler.

It was like scoring the winning goal, we yelled and jumped up and down.

And then someone made this innocent comment.

"She sinks in 20 minutes."

It was 2 in the morning, she sank at 2:20.

Then it really hit me hard.

I never expected to be emotionally touched.

And it hit me particularly when we were processing some of the film and we saw pairs of shoes.

So imagine seeing, this was powerful.

A mother's shoes next to her daughter's shoes, where they landed together.

That's a very sacred place.

- [Pamela] The crew held a memorial service on deck.

The following year, Ballard returned in a three person submersible to see the Titanic with his own eyes.

- The amazing moment was going inside.

Now obviously our submarine couldn't fit inside.

Well, I had developed this little vehicle called Jason Jr., and it was like a robot on a fishing line.

So imagine landing on the deck of the Titanic, clunk.

And we landed right where the grand staircase used to be but the glass shattered.

And so we launched our little robot out and it went down in the grand staircase and it goes into this dark void and a light comes on in front of us.

- And what did you see?

- We had a heart attack.

I mean my head went back hit the bulkhead of the submarine.

A light.

We were shining our lights on a crystal chandelier and it was our lights coming back at us.

It's like those movie scenes where the cowboy draws on himself in a mirror.

- [Pamela] As amazing as that underwater voyage was, it's not the only shipwreck Ballard has uncovered.

He's also located John F, Kennedy's, PT 109 boat, German battleship, the Bismarck, and the World War II aircraft carrier Yorktown, as well as almost a hundred other vessels.

Some in the Black Sea.

- [Bob] We found perfectly preserved shipwrecks sitting upright.

Even human remains, from 200 BC, still there, can't beat that.

- [Pamela] There is one enduring mystery that still challenges Ballard.

In 2019, he searched unsuccessfully in the South Pacific for the remains of the plane flown by famed aviator Amelia Earhart.

While many believe she may have crashed and been taken hostage as a spy, Ballard is convinced her aircraft is in the sea off Howland Island.

- Stay tuned for round two.

- Do you think you're going back?

- I know I'm going back.

- Soon?

- Stay tuned.

- Do you think you can find her?

- Absolutely.

It took two times to find the Bismarck.

- [Pamela] Ballard says he's equally excited about findings being made today at the School of Oceanography's Inner Space Center.

He calls it mission control, where six ships are using live telepresence technology, forging unexplored territory in the deep.

- Each of these ships have a very large gyrostabilized satellite that's able to beam what they're doing live back to the Inner Space Center.

- [Pamela] You can see it crystal clear.

- Yeah.

- I mean and we've even seen like the, well here we go.

What's happening here?

- That's, it's gonna pick up a sample I suspect.

That's a manipulator.

And they're going in to probably collect a biological specimen.

- [Pamela] And it is this specimen, which Ballard says is indicative of a whole new ecosystem under the sea.

- Giant tube worm that sticks out its lung and ingests hydrogen sulfide, to kill you, and feeds it to its gut where it's another creature is living symbiotically in the gut of these and can oxidize that hydrogen sulfide and fix carbon and set up a whole food chain.

- [Pamela] Ballard says his finding of the giant tube worm has NASA searching for the same creature in the oceans on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter.

- And they should have life.

Now, I don't think it'll be New York City down there.

- [Pamela] While Ballard can joke about finding a thriving world on another planet, the explorer in him says, time is of the essence.

- There's no plan B for the human race.

We're not gonna leave our solar system.

The laws of physics make it impossible for humans to leave our own solar system.

So let's prove that there's life within our own solar system.

Unless we get back in tune with Mother Earth, we're not gonna survive.

- [Pamela] And so the work continues for Ballard in every direction.

Now in his 80s, he's currently planning a center to showcase all his wonders.

- We're building a new 360 degree dome where you'll be there.

Imagine you're in a room and it's all around you.

We just shot it, footage last week.

When you go where no one has ever been, you can't miss making discoveries.

(uplifting music) (uplifting music continues)