>There was a time in the 1960s when the oceans were considered to be as important to explore as space.
Arguably a lot of that was just cover for cold war military submarine/anti-submarine research. Seabed hydrophones for tracking soviet subs, undersea mapping for submarine navigation, DSVs for recovering intelligence from wrecks, etc. Famously the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic was just the cover story for exploring submarine wrecks in the Atlantic.
Arguably a lot of that was just cover for cold war military submarine/anti-submarine research. Seabed hydrophones for tracking soviet subs, undersea mapping for submarine navigation, DSVs for recovering intelligence from wrecks, etc. Famously the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic was just the cover story for exploring submarine wrecks in the Atlantic.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/13/us/titanic-discovery-classifi...