Global Courant
Roger Payne, the scientist who sparked a global environmental conservation movement with his discovery that whales could sing, has passed away. He turned 88.
Payne made the discovery in 1967 during a research trip to Bermuda, where a naval engineer provided him with a recording of curious underwater sounds documented while listening to Russian submarines. Payne identified the terrifying tones as songs whales sing to each other.
He saw the discovery of whale song as an opportunity to spark interest in saving the gigantic animals that were disappearing from the planet. Payne would go on to produce the album “Songs of the Humpback Whale” in 1970. A surprise hit, the record sparked a global movement to end the practice of commercial whaling and save whales from extinction.
Payne was aware from the start that whale singing was an opportunity to interest the public in protecting an animal previously regarded as little more than a resource, curiosity, or nuisance. He told Nautilus Quarterly in a 2021 interview that he first heard the recording in the loud engine room of a research vessel and knew almost immediately that the sounds were indeed whales.
“Despite the noise, what I heard surprised me. It seemed clear that here was finally an opportunity to interest the world in preventing whale extinction,” he told the magazine.
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Payne died of pelvic cancer on Saturday. He lived in South Woodstock, Vermont, with his wife, the actress Lisa Harrow. Funeral arrangements have not yet been made, Harrow said.
Payne had four children from a previous marriage to zoologist Katy Payne, with whom he worked. The two used primitive equipment in the late 1960s to record the sounds of humpback whales singing their eerie, complex songs sometimes for more than half an hour at a time.
The impact of the discovery of whale song on the nascent environmental movement was immense. Many anti-war protesters of the time saw saving animals and the environment as a new business, and the words “save the whales” became ubiquitous on tote bags and bumper stickers.
Roger Payne is shown aboard Ocean Alliance’s research vessel RV Odyssey during a groundbreaking toxicology study circumnavigating the globe in 2002. Payne, the scientist who discovered that whales can sing, died at the age of 88. (Christopher Johnson/Ocean Alliance via AP)
Whale songs entered the popular imagination through everything from a 1971 episode of “The Partridge Family” to a 1979 issue of National Geographic featuring a flexi disc of excerpts from “Songs of the Humpback Whale.” It remains the best-selling environmental album in history.
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Payne founded Ocean Alliance in 1971 to advocate for the protection of whales and dolphins. The organization continues to operate in Gloucester, Massachusetts to this day. It has played a role in turning points in whale protection history, such as the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972 by the United States Congress and the 1982 moratorium on commercial whaling passed by the International Whaling Commission.
The world has lost an environmental conservation giant with Payne’s death, said Iain Kerr, the CEO of Ocean Alliance and a longtime Payne collaborator. Payne retired two years ago.
“He had a presence and a way of connecting with people that led them to dedicate their lives to protecting whales and our planet Earth,” Kerr said.
Born in New York City, Payne attended Harvard University and Cornell University, where he received his doctorate. Early in his career as a biologist, he studied bats and birds.
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He met Harrow, his widow, in 1991 at a whale conservation rally in London’s Trafalgar Square. They married within 10 weeks of meeting.
“The way his mind worked was a constant joy,” Harrow said. “He was constantly looking for answers, to seemingly constant questions.”
