Harrison Smith, writing in the Washington Post, describes Roger Payne as “a biologist who put his ear to the ocean and pioneered the study of whale songs.” His recordings of their hypnotic, intricately patterned vocalizations — haunting wails, birdlike chirps, playful squeals, and mournful moos — suggested that the animals had a far richer inner life than previously imagined and helped to galvanize the anti-whaling movement. 

Roger Payne died of cancer on June 10 at his home in South Woodstock, Vt. He was 88.

For centuries, sailors heard the sounds made by whales reverberating through the hulls of wooden ships. Arctic whalers dubbed beluga whales the “canaries of the seas” for their clicks, chirps, and whistles.  Nevertheless, it was long thought that whale noises were nothing more than expressive sounds or calls. That would change in 1967 when Roger Payne was on a research trip to Bermuda, along with a naval engineer who was documenting underwater sounds while listening out for sounds of Russian submarines.

Together with researcher Scott McVay, Payne discovered the complex sonic arrangements performed by the male humpback whales during the breeding season.  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. He identified these sounds as whales singing to one another.

“It took time for me to notice, because while the whales do repeat themselves, several minutes often pass before the same stanza comes around again. Also, there are no breaks in their songs. Unlike birds, they sing a river of sound that flows on and on, sometimes for hours,” Payne told Nautilus Quarterly.

Payne saw the discovery of whale song as a chance to spur interest in saving the giant animals, who were disappearing from the planet. Payne would produce the album “Songs of the Humpback Whale” in 1970. A surprise hit, the record galvanized a global movement to end the practice of commercial whale hunting and save the whales from extinction.

David Gruber, a marine biologist who collaborated with Dr. Payne in recent years, said his recordings “sparked the ‘Save the Whales’ movement, one of the most successful conservation initiatives in history, which saved several whale populations from extinction.” Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, inaugurating new protections for whales, dolphins, and other animals, and in 1982 the International Whaling Commission voted to implement a moratorium on commercial whaling.

“To scientists and conservationists,” Gruber added in an email, “Roger will be remembered not only for saving the whales, but for teaching humanity how to marvel at the wonders of the natural world, and hopefully save ourselves in the process.”

Five days before his death, Time magazine published an essay by Dr. Payne calling for a new conservation movement. He was working with Gruber on an initiative called Project CETI, which aims to translate sperm whale vocalizations, and hoped its findings would remind people of the interdependence of life on Earth.

“As my time runs out,” he wrote, “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.”

Attend the Whale Song: Roger Payne at TEDxBeaconStreet

Thanks to Alaric Bond for contributing to this post.