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Roger Payne

For other people named Roger Payne, see Roger Payne (disambiguation).

Roger Searle Payne (January 29, 1935 – June 10, 2023) was an American biologist and environmentalist famous for his 1967 discovery (with Scott McVay) of whale song among humpback whales. Payne later became an important figure in the worldwide campaign to end commercial whaling.

Roger Payne
Born
Roger Searle Payne

(1935-01-29)January 29, 1935
New York City, U.S.
DiedJune 10, 2023(2023-06-10) (aged 88)
South Woodstock, Vermont, U.S.
EducationHorace Mann School[1]
Alma mater
Occupations
  • Zoologist
  • researcher
  • science administrator
  • conservationist
Employers
Known forDiscovery of whale song amongst humpback whales
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1960; div. 1985)​
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(m. 1991)​
Children4

Early life

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Payne was born on January 29, 1935, in Manhattan, New York City, to Elizabeth (née Searle) and Edward Benedict Payne. His mother was a music teacher and his father an electrical engineer.[2] Payne graduated from Horace Mann School[3] in 1952. He later received his BA degree at Harvard University and his Ph.D. at Cornell University.[2]

Career

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Payne spent the early years of his career studying echolocation in bats (and how their food, moths, avoid them) and auditory localization in owls. Desiring to work with something more directly linked to conservation, he later focused his research on whales. He and fellow researcher Scott McVay in 1967 discovered the complex sonic arrangements performed by male humpback whales during the breeding season. The specific discovery was made during a research trip to Bermuda with a naval engineer who was documenting underwater sounds while listening for the sounds of Russian submarines.[4][5]

Payne described the whale songs as "exuberant, uninterrupted rivers of sound" with long, repeated "themes", each song lasting up to 30 minutes and sung by an entire group of male humpbacks at once. The songs would be varied slightly between each breeding season, with a few new phrases added on and a few others dropped.[6] He identified these sounds as whales singing to one another.[5]

Payne's recordings were released in 1970 as an LP called Songs of the Humpback Whale (still the best-selling nature sound record of all time)[7] which helped to gain momentum for the Save the Whales movement seeking to end commercial whaling, which at the time was pushing many species dangerously close to extinction. Commercial whaling was finally banned by the International Whaling Commission in 1986.[8][5]

Payne subsequently led many expeditions on the world's oceans studying whales, their migrations, cultures and vocalizations.[7] Payne was also the first to suggest fin whales and blue whales can communicate with sound[9] across whole oceans, a theory since confirmed.[10][11] In 1975 a second LP was released, and in 1987 Payne collaborated with musician Paul Winter in combining whalesong with human music.[12][13]

Whale recordings by Frank Watlington (with commentary by Payne) were released on a flexi disc soundsheet inside the January 1979 National Geographic magazine. This issue, at 10.5 million copies, became the largest single press run of any record at the time.[7][14] In addition to whale recordings Payne also published books and worked with film crews on many television documentary productions and on the IMAX movie Whales: An Unforgettable Journey.[15][16]

In 1971, Payne founded Ocean Alliance, a 501(c)(3) organization working for whale and ocean conservation, based in Gloucester, Massachusetts.[5] He was also an assistant professor of biology at Rockefeller University and, concurrently, a research zoologist at the Institute for Research in Animal Behavior (IRAB), run by Rockefeller University and the Wildlife Conservation Society, then known as the New York Zoological Society. IRAB was succeeded by the Wildlife Conservation Society's Center for Field Biology and Conservation (CFBC) in 1972, and Payne continued as a Wildlife Conservation Society research zoologist and scientific director of the society's Whale Fund until 1983.[17][18] From 2020, Payne served as principal advisor to Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), a TED Audacious Project and nonprofit, interdisciplinary scientific and conservation initiative.[19][20][21] As a member of Friends of Lolita, Inc. (aka Friends of Toki), a non–profit corporation, one of Payne's last involvements was in supporting the planned move of the captive orca Lolita from the Miami Seaquarium to a sanctuary in the Salish Sea.[22]

Personal life

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From 1960 to 1985 Payne was married to noted whale and elephant researcher Katharine Payne, who performed similar research on the vocalizations of elephants and humpbacks.[23] The couple had four children.[5] Payne married actress and environmentalist Lisa Harrow in 1991.[2]

Payne died at his home in South Woodstock, Vermont, from squamous-cell carcinoma on June 10, 2023, at the age of 88.[24][2][25][26][1]

Five days before his death, Payne published an essay in Time calling for a new conservation movement. He wrote, "As my time runs out, I am possessed with the hope that humans worldwide are smart enough and adaptable enough to put the saving of other species where it belongs: at the top of the list of our most important jobs. I believe that science can help us survive our folly."[19][2]

Cultural influence

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Works

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Scientist Roger Payne'52 - Horace Mann School". www.horacemann.org. Retrieved September 3, 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d e Roberts, Sam (June 14, 2023). "Roger Payne, Biologist Who Heard Whales Singing, Dies at 88". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 14, 2023.
  3. ^ "Scientist Roger Payne'52 - Horace Mann School". www.horacemann.org. Retrieved August 31, 2023.
  4. ^ Payne, Roger S.; McVay, Scott (1971). "Songs of Humpback Whales". Science. 173 (3997): 585–597. Bibcode:1971Sci...173..585P. doi:10.1126/science.173.3997.585. PMID 17833100. S2CID 1895141.
  5. ^ a b c d e "Roger Payne, conservationist and popularizer of whale song, dies aged 88". The Guardian. Associated Press. June 14, 2023. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  6. ^ "Song Structure – Whale Trust Maui". www.whaletrust.org. Archived from the original on October 26, 2014. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  7. ^ a b c "PBS – the Voyage of the Odyssey – Track the Voyage – Meet the Crew". www.pbs.org. Archived from the original on June 26, 2001. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  8. ^ "Commercial whaling: Unsustainable, Inhumane, Unnecessary". Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  9. ^ Širović, Ana; Hildebrand, John A.; Wiggins, Sean M. (August 2007). "Blue and fin whale call source levels and propagation range in the Southern Ocean". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 122 (2): 1208–1215. Bibcode:2007ASAJ..122.1208S. doi:10.1121/1.2749452. PMID 17672667.
  10. ^ "Groundbreaking effort launched to decode whale language". Animals. April 19, 2021. Archived from the original on April 19, 2021. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  11. ^ "Warbling Whales Speak A Language All Their Own". ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  12. ^ a b "Whales Alive! | Paul Winter". Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  13. ^ a b Paul Winter / Paul Halley – Whales Alive, 1987, retrieved June 16, 2023
  14. ^ "Radio Expeditions @ nationalgeographic.com". National Geographic Society. Archived from the original on July 23, 2015. Retrieved May 19, 2015.
  15. ^ a b "eSpeakers Marketplace". www.espeakers.com. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  16. ^ a b "Whales: An Unforgettable Journey". TVGuide.com. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  17. ^ "Roger Searle Payne". Marquis Who's Who, 2008. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale, 2009. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC. Fee, via Fairfax County Public Library. Accessed April 9, 2009. Document Number: K2014856565.
  18. ^ "New York Zoological Society. Center for Field Biology and Conservation records". WCS Archives Finding Aids. Wildlife Conservation Society. Retrieved November 28, 2022.
  19. ^ a b Payne, Roger (June 5, 2023). "I Spent My Life Saving the Whales. Now They Might Save Us". Time. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  20. ^ "Dr. Roger Payne Website". Dr. Roger Payne Website. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  21. ^ "Project CETI Website". Project CETI Website. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  22. ^ "Historic Initiative to Return Orca Lolita to Home Waters". The Whale Sanctuary Project. March 30, 2023. Retrieved April 10, 2023.
  23. ^ Cowley, Geoffrey (March 20, 1989). "Rap Songs from the Deep". Newsweek. p. 63.
  24. ^ Remembering the late biologist Roger Payne and his monumental 'Songs of the Humpback Whale'
  25. ^ "In Honor of Doctor Roger Payne Longtime Member of the Sea Shepherd Board of Directors and Senior Science Advisor". Sea Shepherd. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. June 12, 2023. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
  26. ^ Smith, Harrison (June 14, 2023). "Roger Payne, who shared whale songs with the world, dies at 88". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  27. ^ "Liner Notes for Judy Collins's "Whales and Nightingales"". Richieunterberger.com. Retrieved April 13, 2020.
  28. ^ Henahan, Donal (June 13, 1970). "Music: Whales Sing Out". The New York Times.
  29. ^ Lewis, Tim (December 6, 2020). "'It always hits me hard': how a haunting album helped save the whales". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  30. ^ Altizer, Katherine (2023). Piano Dogs and Whale Theaters: Paranoid Relations and Affect with Nowhere to Go in the Study of Nonhuman Animals and Music (Thesis).[page needed]
  31. ^ Ebert, Roger. "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home movie review (1986) | Roger Ebert". www.rogerebert.com. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  32. ^ "Humpback Song". Ocean Alliance. November 11, 2018. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  33. ^ Mall, © Stanford University 450 Serra; Stanford; Complaints, California 94305 723–2300 Terms of Use | Copyright. "Making Waves". The Book Haven. Retrieved June 16, 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  34. ^ a b "Dr. Roger S. Payne". Discogs. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  35. ^ "It's a Whale Of a Song". The Washington Post.
  36. ^ Deep Voices by Produced by Dr. Roger Payne
  37. ^ Zad, Martie (April 5, 1992). "DISCOVERY PUTS VIEWERS 'IN THE COMPANY OF WHALES'". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  38. ^ Payne, Roger (January 1, 1995). Among Whales. New York: Scribner. ISBN 978-0-684-80210-7.
  39. ^ "Finite Oceans". prod-www.tcm.com. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
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