Wreck of the RMS Titanic of the film, made using a model of "Titanic", it would not have been physically possible. At the time of the book's writing, it was still believed that she sank in one piece. Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution had long been interested in finding "Titanic". Despite early negotiations with possible backers being abandoned when it emerged that they wanted to turn the wreck into souvenir paperweights, more sympathetic backers joined Ballard to form a company named Seasonics International Ltd. as a vehicle for rediscovering and exploring "Titanic". In October 1977 he made his first attempt to find
Wreck of the RMS Titanic over the wreck site, and the "Remora" ROV was caught in a piece of wreckage. This same year saw the discovery of the new bacteria living in the rusticles on the "Titanic", "Halomonas titanicae". Tourist and scientific visits to "Titanic" are still continuing; by April 2012, 100 years since the disaster and nearly 25 since the discovery of the wreck, around 140 people had visited. On 14 April 2012 (the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking), the wreck of the "Titanic" became eligible for protection under the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage. In the same