1910

	1912 Scripps Institute Scripps Institution of Oceanography becomes affiliated with the University of California. Scripps is one of the world's leading marine research centers and is located in La Jolla, California, just north of San Diego.

	April 15, 1912 Titanic Sinks The White Star Liner Titanic sinks after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. Over 1500 passengers lose their lives during one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history. This tragedy leads to a concerted effort to devise an acoustic means of discovering objects in the water ahead of a moving vessel.

1930

	1930 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is founded. Woods Hole would become one of the world's leading oceanographic research institutions.

	1934 First Deep Ocean Dive William Beebe and Otis Barton descend in a tethered sphere to a depth of a half-mile, where they find a previously unseen world of bizarre, luminescent creatures.

	1935 Sonobuoy Developed Researchers at the Coast and Geodetic Survey invent an automatic telemetering radio sono-buoy. This instrument eliminates the need for manned station ships during Radio Acoustic Ranging (RAR) navigation operations. This instrument is considered to be the first offshore moored telemetering instrument.

	1937 Bathythermograph Invented Geophysicist and oceanographer Athelstan Spilhaus invents the bathythermograph, a measuring device that continuously records temperatures. The invention's name stands the test of time, and is still in use today.

	1938 Live Coelacanth Discovered Fishermen off the coast of South Africa pull up a five-foot fish identified as a coelacanth, a living fossil thought to be extinct since the days of the dinosaurs. Since then, several live coelacanth have been discovered in African coastal waters.

1940

1941 World War II During World War II, electronic navigation systems are developed for precision bombing. A few years later, the Coast and Geodetic Survey conducts its first hydrographic surveys using these systems. Research during the war leads to many new tools for ocean exploration, including deep-ocean camera systems, early magnetometers, sidescan sonar instruments, and early technology for guiding Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs).

	1943 First Modern Scuba Explorers Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan develop the first scuba that allows divers to stay underwater for extended periods and more effectively explore the ocean realm.

	1948 First Untethered Deep Water Craft Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard dives in his newly designed vehicle known as a bathyscaph. It is the first untethered craft to carry people into the oceans deep waters. His son, Jacques Piccard, would soon take the bathyscaph to the deepest point in the ocean.

1950

1951 Deepest Ocean Point Found The British ship Challenger II bounces sound waves off the ocean bottom and locates what appears to be the sea's deepest point. Nearly seven miles down, it is subsequently named the Challenger Deep. Located off the coast of the Marianas Islands in the Pacific Ocean, the site is known today as the Marianas Trench. If you could put Mount Everest on the ocean floor in the Marianas Trench, its summit would lie about a mile below the ocean surface.

1955 Magnetic Striping Discovered In a joint project with the U.S. Navy and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Coast and Geodetic Survey Ship Pioneer tows the first marine magnetometer and discovers magnetic striping on the sea floor off the west coast of the United States. This discovery proves that the sea floor is spreading, providing significant credibility to the theory of plate tectonics.

1960

January 23, 1960 Deepest Ocean Dive Jacques Piccard, son of explorer August Piccard, and two other men descend into the ocean to a depth of 35,797 feet, nearly seven miles. They make the trip in the Trieste, a sturdy underwater vehicle known as a bathyscaphe. Trieste was designed by Piccard and built several years earlier. The divers discover fish and other amazing deep-sea life at these tremendous depths.

	1961 Tow System Developed The Scripps Institution of Oceanography begins development of the Deep Tow System. This sonar system becomes the forerunner of all remotely-operated and unmanned oceanographic systems today.

1962 First Underwater Habitat Several experiments are conducted whereby people live in underwater habitats. The researchers leave the habitat for exploration and return again for food, sleep, and relaxation. The habitats are supplied by compressed air from the surface. In the first such experiment, Conshelf (Continental Shelf) One, Jacques Cousteau and his team spend seven days under 33 feet of water near Marseilles, France, in a habitat they name Diogenes.

	1963 First Multibeam Sounding The first operational multibeam sounding system is installed on the USNS Compass Island. This system observes a number of soundings to the left and right of a ship's head as well as vertically. This allows the development of a relatively accurate map of the sea floor as the ship proceeds on a survey line.

	1965 First Underwater Robot The Navy develops Halibut, a submarine that can lower miles of cables bearing lights, cameras, and other gear to spy on enemy armaments and materiel lost on the bottom of the sea.

1970

October, 1970 NOAA Established The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is established. This U.S. Government agency is responsible for all U.S. weather and climate forecasting, monitoring and archiving of ocean and atmospheric data, management of marine fisheries and mammals, mapping and charting of all U.S. waters, coastal zone management, and research and development in all of these areas.

1977 Hydrothermal Vents Discovered Scientists aboard the deep sea submersible, Alvin, discover and document incredible deep sea hydrothermal vents in the eastern Pacific ocean. Scalding hot water pouring from these vents enriches the water with nutrients and provides food for bacteria and a host of other organisms. This discovery rocks the scientific community because, for the first time, an ecosystem has been found that thrives without the energy of the Sun. Instead of relying on sunlight and photosynthesis, these ecosystems thrive on chemical energy through a process known as chemosynthesis.

1980

July 20, 1985 Atocha Found Famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher finds the wreck of the Atocha off the coast of the Florida Keys. Lying in only 55 feet of water, the Atocha would soon yield the biggest treasure ever recovered from a shipwreck. The discovery would come at a price, however. Mel loses his son, Dirk, Dirk's wife, and another crewmember in a tragic boating accident in 1975 while searching for the Atocha.

	September 1, 1985 Titanic Found Dr. Robert Ballard, with the help of a tiny robotic submarine named Jason, discovers the wreck of the Titanic. The wreck is found in 12,500 feet (two and a half miles) of water about 375 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. Titanic is found in two separate pieces, dashing any hopes of one day raising the mighty ship.