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Roger Payne’s discovery of song helped make the animals icons of conservation; now he’s helping turn them into symbols of how humans are poisoning the oceans A Toxic Odyssey

THE INDIAN OCEAN, 2°N, 72°E—Seven days of fin and blue carry information down the blue rim of the horizon, the crew have rolled by without a sighting. Although clear across the oceans. But the focus of his is getting antsy. But just when it seems that the waters over these deep ocean trenches research out here is —specifically, all the whales have fled for the poles, the hy- east of the Maldives are a well-known feed- the class of humanmade chemicals known as drophone speakers erupt with clicks. “We’ve ing ground for sperm whales, the crew of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which got whales!” says Payne with a grin. The the Odyssey has seen nothing larger than a can sabotage biochemical processes by mim- glowing dots on the computer screen show a pod of playful dolphins, riding the ship’s icking hormones. Some scientists fear that group of 20 sperm whales feeding just bow wave and flinging themselves into the these compounds would become so concen- ahead. Bowls of cereal and cups of coffee air like Chinese acrobats. A man with silver trated in marine ecosystems that fish stocks are left half-full as the crew springs into ac- flyaway hair steps out from the pilothouse would be rendered too toxic for human con- tion and the Odyssey surges forward. and squints up at the observation deck, sumption. “No one knows how polluted the where two crew members are scanning the oceans are,” says Payne, “because no system- A life among whales horizon. “A gold doubloon for the first man atic, global study has been made.” For Payne, this voyage is part of a personal to spot a whale!” he booms, imitating Cap- To try to plug that gap, Payne has assem- odyssey that began exactly 50 years ago tain Ahab from Moby-Dick. bled a 12-person crew of scientists and edu- when, as a “green” Harvard freshman, he Like Ahab, has been plying cators to circumnavigate the globe for 5 was asked to baby-sit some . These were the seas in a tireless search for sperm whales, years aboard the Odyssey, a 28-meter float- the furry research subjects of the late Donald the largest of the toothed whales. Unlike ing laboratory. Because POPs become in- Griffin, the renowned biologist who discov- Ahab’s ship the Pequod, however, the creasingly concentrated at higher levels of ered echolocation. Up to this point, Payne Odyssey is equipped with tissue-sampling the food chain, Payne’s strategy for deter- says he “had no idea you could make a living crossbows instead of harpoons and a toxicol- mining the extent of pollution is to measure doing something like .” After Griffin ogy lab instead of -boiling tryworks. contamination in the blubber of sperm became his undergraduate research mentor, Payne is best known for revealing that the whales—a top predator found in all oceans. Payne became “obsessed” with bioacoustics. unearthly vocalizations of humpback whales After 4 years at sea, his team’s early results He went on to do his Ph.D. research on how are structured like songs, a discovery that are looking grim: The chemicals have owls use sound to locate prey, and during his made the cover of Science in 1971 (16 Au- accumulated in the fat of every sample ana- postdoc he showed how moths use sound to gust), and for his hypothesis that the sounds lyzed so far, even from places farther from evade predators. “The secret of Roger’s suc- land than anywhere cess,” says Thomas Eisner, an entomologist else on Earth. The at in Ithaca, New York, presence of POPs, par- who helped supervise Payne’s Ph.D., “is his ticularly in coastal en- creative, playful mind and infectious pas- vironments, has long sion.” Eisner recalls Payne constantly zip- been known, says John ping around campus on his bicycle wearing a Stegeman, a toxicolo- cape and a cello on his back. gist at the Woods Hole Then, Griffin called on Payne once Oceanographic Institu- again. Griffin had moved to Rockefeller tion in , University in , and he per- but Payne’s study is suaded Payne to join him there to pursue crucial because it will something new. It was the late 1960s, recalls provide a global snap- Payne, and “I felt that what I was doing was shot of the extent of not relevant to the problems that assailed the contamination. world around me. The wild world I loved To take such sam- above all else was being destroyed. Then I ples, of course, the in- thought of whales.” Commercial trepid researchers must was then in its heyday, with tens of thou- first find whales. After sands of whales slaughtered each year. “I No ordinary whaler. The Odyssey is in the last year of a 5-year voyage this unusually long thought, If I studied whales, maybe I could

to measure persistent organic pollutants in blubber. hiatus of 7 days staring find a way to change their fate.” FLIP NICKLIN;CREDITS: BOTTOM) TO ALLIANCE CHRIS JOHNSON/OCEAN (TOP

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A big question at the time was “just what into the public gaze: The “Save the Whales” and even a knighthood from the prince of the whales are doing with such big brains.” movement was born. “Most people’s idea of Netherlands. But saving the whales has also Payne suspected that they were using them whales was limited to Moby-Dick,” recalls come at a price. In 1985 he left Rockefeller to to process and communicate complex Payne. So he teamed up with poets, musi- devote himself to the , which sounds, but “I had never even seen a whale.” cians, and “anyone he could get hold of ” to he had incorporated in 1981 to promote the So, he bought a ticket for Bermuda, where generate sympathy. The haunting songs be- preservation of the ocean. The move later humpback whales were known to pass in guiled the public: A vinyl record of Payne’s seemed like “one of the bigger mistakes of their migrations. There he met Frank humpback tapes, included in the December my life,” he says. Keeping the nonprofit Watlington, a Bermudian engineer studying 1976 issue of National Geographic, is still afloat “has left me no more than 10% of my underwater sound for the U.S. Navy. The the largest single print order in the history of time for basic research, which is the love that Navy was interested in listening for Soviet the recording industry. Payne went on to got me into all of this in the first place.” submarines, but in his spare time, Watling- host, write, or direct several award-winning But here aboard the Odyssey, among the ton had also recorded hours of bizarre un- documentaries about whales for television whales again, Payne is in his element. He first derwater sounds that Payne later confirmed as well as an IMAX film. had the idea for the voyage 26 years ago. To were coming from whales. Governments responded to the surging make this possible, Payne and the Ocean Al- Payne spent weeks wearing a pair of head- interest by creating the largest animal sanc- liance raised $3 million from private donors phones, listening over and over to one tape in tuaries on Earth—the Indian Ocean north of and foundations, about $750,000 short of particular. The whales were producing very 55° south latitude in 1979 and later most of what is needed to complete the voyage. “It’s complex vocalizations—traversing eight oc- taken a long time to realize taves in pitch from deep, organlike rumbles to this dream,” he says, “but it’s high-frequency, flutelike glissandos—but finally come true. It’s so good there just wasn’t any obvious structure. Then it to be doing research so far suddenly came together. He noticed that the from land.” entire performance repeated after about 15 minutes. Payne was ecstatic. It isn’t just ran- Canaries of the sea dom, he thought. “These are repeated, rhyth- “We’ve got a blow at 1 mic sequences: They’re songs!” o’clock, about 300 meters!” Payne and whale advocate Scott McVay, crackles a voice over the ra- then an administrator at Princeton University dio from the observation in New Jersey, later demonstrated the song deck. In the distance, a white structure together. This was long before the plume floats over the water days of home computers. McVay had access like a puff of steam. Moments to a machine that transcribed sounds onto pa- later, a second plume, smaller per with a stylus. Sure enough, the repeating than the first, jets into the air. structure was plain to see. The “pioneering, “Make that two blows.” Bob detailed studies” were among the first to Wallace, the ship’s engineer show “the significance of sound to marine at the helm, closes in and mammals,” says John Hildebrand, a bio- then cuts the engines. acoustics researcher at the Scripps Institution Odyssey glides quietly closer of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. to the pair. Just what exactly the whales are saying Payne may be 69 years to each other is another question, one that old, but he’s the first to run Payne and others have pursued ever since. out to the very front of the He later proposed that the sounds made by boat and clamber onto the two other very loud-voiced whales, the blue bowsprit. This puts him in a and fin whales, can carry clear across deep precarious spot far beyond ocean basins. Payne’s working hypothesis is the safety of the deck, rising that the songs of humpback whales are sung and dipping over the waves, by males to attract females and threaten but it affords the best view. At other males; the same may be the case with first they look like a couple of the songs of blue and fin whales. But he gray barrels floating in the thinks that evolution has also endowed these distance, but once the whales with the ability to share information Odyssey is less than a boat- across entire oceans, perhaps to clue each Ocean crusader. After a career at , Roger length away, the whales’ full, other in to the whereabouts of prey in the Payne formed the Ocean Alliance to promote ocean preservation. submerged forms take shape ocean’s ever-shifting feeding grounds. beneath the chalky blue sur- Since then, says Christopher Clark, a ma- the Antarctic Ocean, both of which remain face: The adult is as big as a school bus, rine biologist at Cornell, Payne has been an no-whaling zones. Then in 1982, a world- while the juvenile is about half that size. And “inspiration” to a generation of whale re- wide moratorium on commercial whaling these are small by sperm whale standards. A searchers and has invented many standard came into effect. full-grown male can reach 18 meters in techniques, such as identifying individual For his championing of whales, Payne has length and weigh over 50 tons. The only part whales by photos of their natural markings. been showered with honors, including a of each whale above the water line is the tip The discovery of whale song not only MacArthur Fellowship, appointment as one of its massive, squared-off head, exposing

CREDIT:ALLIANCE CHRIS JOHNSON/OCEAN propelled Payne’s career but lifted whales of the “Global 500” by the United Nations, the single S-shaped blow hole offset to the

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 304 11 JUNE 2004 1585 N EWS F OCUS left side. The two whales seem supremely Measuring the chemicals in whale blub- “Wow. Did you get that?” he asks. In the com- calm, taking a breather before swimming ber is only the first step, because although ing days, the images will be seen by thousands down for more squid. the toxicants accumulate during the life- of people tuned in to Payne’s other mission: to Just when the whales loom close enough times of whales, they do undergo some me- “share what we learn out here in real time.” for the crew to see the sky reflected off their tabolism. We need a way, explains Godard, Every day Johnson has kept fans abreast glistening skin, they begin to roll into a dive. to measure lifetime exposure to contamina- of the voyage—posting everything from sci- Their heads disappear as their enormous tion, because this is the best way to use entific reports and videos on conservation backs, covered with crenulations like giant whales as measuring sticks of global pollu- threats to interviews with local scientists sea prunes, breach the surface, followed by tion. To do that, the Odyssey team is fine- (see www.pbs.org/odyssey). “Following the their tails in a graceful arc. Before the tuning a molecular test that measures the whales around the equator has brought us to whales’ door-sized flukes slap the water for amount of an antitoxicant protein called the most isolated island nations on the plan- the plunge, Rebecca Clark, a Canadian re- CYP1A1 that accumulates in response to et,” says Payne, “and what we’re finding is search assistant who has that their unique, fragile ecosystems are un- been aboard Odyssey for der constant threat from industrialized coun- the whole voyage, takes tries that want the right to fish, whale, and aim with a crossbow from develop luxury resorts.” Most islanders her perch on the bow. The “don’t realize what they have to lose by orange-feathered arrow granting these rights,” he says. “Since they sails down and with a sharp rarely have Internet access,” says Genevieve “pock!” bounces off the Johnson, the ship’s education officer and the adult’s flank. This is no or- other half of this husband-and-wife team, dinary arrow: Its tip forms “we have to take this information to them.” a tiny cylinder like an apple The Johnsons practice what they call corer, gouging a plug of “guerrilla education,” having so far come skin and blubber the size of ashore in 14 countries to date and given a pencil eraser before multimedia presentations about marine re- springing back out. sources to more than 20,000 local people. The arrow is scooped They leave free educational packets with up with a net and received schools and even bring children and teachers with a cheerful “Thank Grim tale from the deep. Toxicologist Celine Godard says that aboard for days at a time to show them how you!” by Veritee Steptoe, every sample analyzed so far from the Pacific contains pollutants. marine science is done. an Australian research as- Odyssey’s educational mission is leaving sistant leaning out of the pilothouse contamination. Because this test requires significant changes in its wake. After a work- and wearing a white lab coat over her pink fresh samples, it has to be performed imme- shop organized by Godard and presented to and neon-blue surfer shorts and tank top. diately. So as the small hours of the morning the environmental minister of Papua New Payne spots the next one: “Another blow at roll by, the only light on Odyssey comes Guinea in 2001, the government designated its 3 o’clock!” he calls from the bowsprit, and from the lab where Clark and Steptoe are entire exclusive economic zone—a 2.8 million Odyssey’s engine rumbles to life. toiling away. Samples are carefully sec- square kilometer area—as a marine sanctuary. Long after the last whale is sampled and tioned into minuscule chunks and soaked in Odyssey’s next whistle stop is the Mediter- the crew has settled in for the night, Clark solution. Eventually the CYP1A1 data ranean this summer, one of the most polluted and Steptoe’s work is just beginning. After should add up to a tool for estimating expo- and populous bodies of water in the world. dissecting the samples, they must parcel sure, turning whales into pollution detectors. “We want to light a fire there,” says Chris them into a range of solutions and file them While they’re toiling away, Steptoe and Johnson, “and really get people thinking about in the freezer. All the samples will be Clark must attend to their share of the ship’s the environment that’s right on their doorstep.” shipped back for analysis and archiving to “glamorous” duties: keeping watch to avoid Odyssey cuts an arc through the water, Celine Godard, a toxicologist at Woods Hole collisions, preparing meals for the 12 people guided by a new cluster of underwater clicks who directs Odyssey’s pollution research. onboard, and cleaning the toilets. “We’ve been from feeding whales. Payne watches the A picture of the extent of pollution is be- very lucky,” says Steptoe, because the weather members of his crew with obvious pride as ginning to emerge from Odyssey’s “moun- has been clear and the boat’s rocking gentle. they scramble to their stations. “All this hard tain” of raw data, says Godard. Every whale But when the seas are rough, “you need five work is going to pay off when the results are sampled and analyzed from the Pacific— hands” to juggle chemicals and samples. published,” he says. “I think that whales will even those in the most remote waters—has “Plus you worry about things taken for grant- focus the world’s attention once more, and polychlorinated biphenyls and DDT ed in labs back on land,” adds Clark, such as hopefully we’ll take action to reverse or at in its blubber. The whales’ meals of fish and making sure the generator is still powering the least slow down whatever environmental squid are almost certainly the source of the freezers and checking that none of the data damage we’re doing.” There’s still a year left contamination, Godard says. “It’s sobering to sheets has blown overboard. “But as long as in the voyage as planned, although Payne discover that these toxicants are distributed everyone knows what job they’re supposed to worries that there isn’t enough money to cov- globally,” says Payne, “although how danger- do, it all works like a well-oiled machine,” er it. He hopes the whales will help reel in re- ous a threat they pose at low concentrations is says Steptoe. “Well, most of the time.” search partners and donors. not yet known.” “People are largely unaware “It’s so ironic,” Payne says, scanning the of POPs,” adds Sylvia Earle, an oceanograph- Wired for whales horizon for white plumes. “We’ve hunted er and former chief scientist of the U.S. Na- As the whales vanish into the dark depths, whales to the point of extinction. And now, tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra- Payne turns to Chris Johnson, the Odyssey’s the whales are helping us to save ourselves.” tion, who says that Payne’s work could be a media producer, who is leaning over the rail- –JOHN BOHANNON

well-timed “wake-up call.” ing with a video camera like a paparazzi. John Bohannon is a writer based in Berlin. CREDIT:ALLIANCE CHRIS JOHNSON/OCEAN

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