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.
Early life
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
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 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
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]
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
Singer
Judy Collins released her best-selling album Whales & Nightingales in 1970, which featured some of Payne's whale recordings on the track "Farewell to Tarwathie".[27]
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) features Payne's recordings, in a plot about rescuing humpback whales from extinction by moving a breeding pair from 1986 to 300 in the future.[31]
In 2010, the band
Glass Wave included Payne's whale recordings in the first track ("Balena") and last track ("Moby Dick") of their album.[32][33]