Roger Payne, who has died of cancer aged 88, was a vital force in the struggle to “save the whale”. During the 20th century, an estimated 3 million great whales were hunted to furnish humans with oil, meat and rose fertiliser. Payne gave a voice to an animal that had hitherto been regarded as dumb – one with a deep register that was, as he described it, a sound as big as the ocean itself.
When Payne released whale sounds in 1970 as a vinyl LP, Songs of the Humpback Whale, the album sold 125,000 copies and eventually reached multi-platinum sales. It was followed in 1979 by a flexi-disc of the sounds that was included with 10.5m copies of National Geographic magazine. The effect was akin to Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book of 1962, Silent Spring. The sounds were strange and otherworldly: they seemed like a lament, a threnody for the animals’ plight. In fact they were a demonstration of another species’ culture: a voice, not a noise.
