VERMONT (AP).- Roger Payne, the scientist who sparked a global conservation movement with his discovery that whales can sing, has died at the age of 88.
Payne made the discovery in 1967 on a scouting trip to Bermuda where a US Navy engineer showed him a recording of strange underwater sounds picked up as the ship tried to detect Russian submarines. Payne identified the sounds as songs that the whales sing to each other.
Payne saw the discovery as an opportunity to generate interest in saving cetaceans, which were disappearing. Payne produced the album “Songs of the Humpback Whale” in 1970. The record became a surprise hit and sparked a global movement to end whaling and save the whales from extinction. animals.
Payne recognized that his discovery offered an opportunity to create interest in protecting an animal that until then was considered more of a natural resource, a curiosity or a nuisance. In an interview with Nautilus Quarterly in 2021, he recounted that when he first heard the sound, in the boat’s noisy engine room, he knew almost immediately that it was whales.
“Despite the noise, what I heard left me in awe. It seemed obvious to me that at last, here was an opportunity to get the world interested in preventing the extinction of whales,” Payne told the magazine.
Payne passed away Saturday from pelvic cancer. He lived in South Woodstock, Vermont, with his wife, 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 collaborated. The two used primitive equipment in the late 1960s to record the sounds of humpback whales, whose complex and unnerving songs can sometimes last half an hour.
The impact of his discovery on the fledgling environmental movement was immense. Many anti-war activists at the time took up the new causes of saving animals and the environment, and the phrase “Save the Whales” became popular on backpacks and stickers.
