Songs of the Humpback Whale with Roger Payne

About 300,000 whales and dolphins are killed every year as a result of human activity. Why is this allowed to continue? Roger Payne asked that same question before deciding to put his expertise toward this issue.

He would eventually become well-known as the person who discovered that humpback whales sing songs.

Tune in to learn:

• At what distances whale sounds can be heard, and how the increase in sound pollution has changed this
• The likely function of repeated patterns of “clicks” made by whales
• Why beluga whales are sometimes called “sea canaries”

Founder and President of Ocean Alliance, Roger Payne, has spent decades studying the function and nature of the sounds that animals make and hear. 

As the environmental crisis became increasingly serious, Payne wanted to shift his research efforts toward an animal that is actively threatened by the state of the environment.

He chose whales—which, at the time, he knew absolutely nothing about. Payne began studying whales and whale songs at Rockefeller University. He explains what it means to say a whale (or other animal) "sings a song," the insight he’s gained from observing whale behavior over the years, and so much more.  

Visit https://whale.org/ to learn more.