2023-06-16 08:49:57
He launched a worldwide movement for the preservation and protection of marine mammals.
Roger Paynethe scientist who sparked a worldwide movement for environmental conservation with his discovery that whales could sing, he has died at the age of 88.
Payne made the discovery in 1967 during a research trip to Bermuda where a Navy engineer provided him with a recording of curious underwater sounds Captured while listening to Russian submarines. Payne identified the haunting tones like songs that Whales Are exchanged.
He saw the discovery of whale song as a chance to stimulate interest in save the giant animals, which were in danger of extinction. Payne produced the album “Songs of the Humpback Whale” en 1970.
To everyone’s surprise, the album galvanized one global movement to end the practice of commercial whaling and save them from extinction.
Payne knew from the beginning that the song of the whales represented an opportunity for the public to would be interested in protecting an animal previously considered little more than an expedient, curiosity, or annoyance.
In an interview in 2021 with the American magazine ‘Nautilus Quarterly’, he said that he first heard the recording on the engine room from a research vessel and knew almost instantneamente that the sounds were whales.
“Despite the uproar, what or me impression. It seemed obvious that here, finally, was an opportunity for the world to take an interest in preventing the extinction of whales,” he told the magazine.
Payne died on Saturday pelvic cancer. Live 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 the zoologist Katy Payne, with whom I collaborate. The two used primitive equipment in the late 1960s to record the sounds of humpback whales.
The impact of the discovery of the whale song on the nascent environmental movement was immense.
Many anti-war protesters took the saving of animals and the environment as a new causeand the words “save the whales” became ubiquitous on tote bags and stickers.
The songs of whales will enter the popular culture through various media, from a 1971 episode of “The Partridge Family” to a 1979 issue of National Geographic which included a disc with excerpts from “Songs of the Humpback Whale”.
Payne fund Ocean Alliance in 1971 to advocate for the protection of whales and dolphins. The organization operates to this day in Gloucester, Mass. He has played a role in watershed moments in the history of whale protection, such as the passage in 1972 of the Law for the Protection of Marine Mammals by the US Congress and the moratorium on commercial hunting of whales approved in 1982 by the International Whaling Commission.
The world has lost a giant environmental conservation with Payne’s death, declared Iain Kerr, CEO of Ocean Alliance and a Payne associate. Payne retired two years ago.
“He has one presence and a way of connect with people that led them to dedicate their lives to protecting the whales and our planet Earth,” Kerr said.
Payne was born in the city of NY and educated at the University of Harvard and the University of Cornellwhere he received his doctorate. Early in his career as a biologist, he studied bats and birds.
He met Harrow, his widow, in 1991 at a rally for the protection of whales in Trafalgar Square in London. They got married 10 weeks after meeting.
“The way his mind worked was a glad constantly,” Harrow said. “I was constantly looking for answersalso constant questions.”
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