Roger Payne

Roger Searle Payne ( born January 29, 1935 in New York City ) is an American zoologist, whale researcher and activist for the conservation of whales.

Life

Payne graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree and received his doctorate from Cornell University in Zoology. He was Assistant Professor of Biology at the Rockefeller University and at the Institute for Research in Animal Behaviour from Rockefeller University and New York Zoological Society. At first he looked at the sonar detection of bats and the acoustic orientation of owls.

Payne is known for the LP Songs of the Humpback Whale with songs of male humpback whales during mating season, which first appeared in 1970, was very successful and had a large influence on the whale. He explored the songs of humpback whales first in 1967 with Scott McVay and it was a pioneer. He discovered that the male humpback whales during the rutting season sing for the season in typical repetitive stanzas, with a song to take half an hour. Payne was also the first who suggested that blue whales and fin whales over entire oceans can communicate with their sounds. He undertook numerous expeditions for whale watching in the world, developed and used by other researchers methods for their monitoring and pursuing long-term programs for the observation of whales, especially whale songs humpback whales and the long-term observation of 1300 Argentine right whales. He is the author of books and films about whales, including the IMAX film Whales. Two of his films have received Emmy nominations.

In 1971 he founded the group Ocean Alliance, Lincoln (Massachusetts ) to protect whales and whale research.

In 1984 he received a MacArthur Award. In 2010 he became an honorary member of the Society of Naval Mammology. He is a Knight of the Dutch Order of the Golden Ark, was awarded the prize of $ 120,000 Lyndhurst Prize Fellowship, the Albert Schweitzer Medal of the Animal Welfare Institute, the Joseph Wood Krutch Medal from the Humane Society of America and a Global 500 Award of the United Nations.

Besides Songs of the Humpback Whales, he published two plates with whale songs, or based on whale songs: Deep Voices (1975 ) with musician Paul Winter and Whales Alive ( 1989), where musicians interpret the Wal- compositions. He also produced a CD of whale songs for one of his National Geographic Article, which had a circulation of 10.5 million.

He was married twice. From his first marriage from 1960 to the division in 1985 with the biologist Katharine Boynton ( specializing in communication of elephants, but they also worked with Roger Payne on Whale Songs ) he has four children. His second wife was married to actress Lisa Harrow New Zealand since 1990.

Writings

• Among Whales, Scribner 1995
• With Scott McVay: Songs of Humpback Whales, Science, Volume 173, 1971, p 585-597
• Katherine Payne: Large scale changes over 19 years in songs of humpback whales in Bermuda, Journal of Animal Psychology, Vol 68, 1985, p 89-114
• Editor and co-author: Communication and Behaviour of Whales, Westview Press, Boulder 1983