Roger Payne, the US scientist who spurred a worldwide environmental conservation movement with his discovery that whales could sing, has died. He was 88.
Payne made the discovery in 1967 during a research trip to Bermuda when a navy engineer provided him with a recording of curious underwater sounds documented while listening for Russian submarines. Payne identified the haunting tones as songs whales sing to one another.
He saw the discovery of whale song as a chance to spur interest in saving the giant animals, who were disappearing from the planet. Payne would produce the album Songs of the Humpback Whale in 1970. A surprise hit, the record galvanized a global movement to end the practice of commercial whale hunting and save the cetaceans from extinction. It remains the best-selling environmental album in history.
Payne was conscious from the start that whale song represented a chance to get the public interested in protecting an animal previously considered little more than a resource, curiosity or nuisance.
Payne died on Saturday of pelvic cancer. He lived in South Woodstock, Vermont, with his wife, the actor Lisa Harrow. Payne was born in New York City and educated at Harvard University and Cornell University.
Payne had four children from a previous marriage to zoologist Katy Payne, with whom he collaborated. The two used primitive equipment in the late 1960s to record the sounds of humpback whales, which sometimes sing their eerie, complex songs for longer than a half hour at a stretch.
The impact of the whale song discovery on the nascent environmental movement was immense. Many anti-war protesters of the day took on saving animals and the environment as a new cause, and the words “save the whales” became ubiquitous on tote bags and bumper stickers.
Researchers have long debated how humpbacks use song, but there is broad agreement that they are sexual signals that male humpback whales use in an attempt to increase their mating opportunities.
“It took time for me to notice, because while the whales do repeat themselves, several minutes often pass before the same stanza comes around again. Also, there are no breaks in their songs. Unlike birds, they sing a river of sound that flows on and on, sometimes for hours,” Payne told Nautilus Quarterly.
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Over the years, the different songs that different species of whales sing led to clues about habits. The whistle of the narwhal may be a signal of group membership or individual recognition. Blue whales sing only at night, when they are not occupied in hunting for krill, sometimes for 12 hours straight.
Payne founded Ocean Alliance, based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1971 to advocate for the protection of whales and dolphins.
English (US)