Songs of the Humpback Whale
BBC Radio 4

The precise technical term for Roger Payne, in his role as facilitator of the multi-platinum-selling album, Songs of the Humpback Whale (1970), is “bioacoustician”. Here found celebrating the record’s half-century, Payne – now a spry-sounding 85 years old – recalled the circumstances in which he took up his career as a sound engineer of the maritime depths.

Hearing that a whale had been washed up on a local beach, Payne arrived at dusk, armed with a flashlight, to discover that the animal (in fact a porpoise) had been desecrated by tourists, had its flukes removed and somebody’s initials carved into its hide. This made his reflect that there must be better ways of interacting with the natural world.