Ocean Alliance 海洋联盟
In 1970, the release of the best-selling nature album of all time introduced the world to whale song and transformed how we view whales forever.
1970 年，这张有史以来最畅销的自然主题专辑的问世，让全世界第一次听到了鲸鱼的歌声。这一发现彻底改变了人类对鲸鱼的认知。
It was 1952 and the height of the Cold War. US sonar engineer Frank Watlington was stationed off the coast of Bermuda, listening in the depths for Soviet submarines and seismic activity.
那是 1952 年，冷战局势十分紧张。美国声纳工程师弗兰克·沃特林顿被派驻在百慕大附近的海域，负责监测海底的声波信号，以探测苏联潜艇的动向以及地震活动。
Watlington was using an early kind of hydrophone: long cables with a microphone at the end that he would sink into the ocean. It’s not known what military operations he may have detected, but he did begin to pick up something else.
沃特林顿使用的是一种早期的水听器：那种带有麦克风的长电缆，他把这些电缆插入海洋中。目前还不清楚他究竟探测到了哪些军事活动，但他确实捕捉到了其他一些信号。
The mournful, disconcerting sounds would go on sometimes for hours. Watlington was fascinated. He couldn’t be sure, but he began to think they were being made by humpback whales.
那些令人悲伤、不安的声音有时会持续数小时之久。沃特林顿被这些声音深深吸引了。他无法确定，但觉得这些声音应该是座头鲸发出的。
It turned out he was right. Watlington and others’ incredible early recordings of humpback communication would go on to transform our view of whales forever. When these were featured on the iconic 1970 album Songs of the Humpback Whale, they introduced the otherworldly sounds of whale song to a world that previously barely knew it existed.
事实证明，他是对的。沃特林顿等人早期录制的那些关于座头鲸交流方式的惊人录音，彻底改变了我们对鲸鱼的认知。当这些录音被收录在 1970 年发行的经典专辑《座头鲸之歌》中时，它们让全世界第一次听到了鲸鱼那美妙动人的歌声。在此之前，人们几乎不知道鲸鱼还会发出这样的声音。
Whale song exploded into popular culture, becoming the soundtrack to the emerging Save the Whales movement that would eventually turn around the declining fortunes of humpbacks. (Scroll down to listen to a clip from the album).
《鲸之歌》迅速风靡流行文化界，成为了新兴的“拯救鲸鱼”运动的背景音乐。这一运动最终帮助了座头鲸摆脱了日益恶化的生存状况。（点击下方可收听该专辑的片段。）
A discovery of song 对歌声的发现
Watlington began sharing his recordings with locals and researchers, and in 1967 he met acoustic biologists Katy and Roger Payne, who had travelled to Bermuda. He played them the recordings in the engine room of his research vessel – a wooden ex-minesweeper from World War Two – while the generator roared in the background.
沃特林顿开始与当地人和研究人员分享他的录音资料。1967 年，他遇到了专门研究声学问题的凯蒂和罗杰·佩恩夫妇，他们当时正在百慕大旅行。沃特林顿在他的研究船的引擎室里为他们播放了这些录音。那艘研究船是一艘二战时期使用的旧扫雷艇。背景中，发电机发出轰鸣声。
“What I heard under impossibly awful conditions of listening was the most extraordinary, amazing acoustic performance I’d ever heard from any animal, and have ever heard from any animal since,” Roger, who died in 2023, told the BBC’s The Documentary podcast in 2020.
“在极其恶劣的聆听条件下，我所听到的声音，却是我有生以来听到过的最出色、最令人惊叹的动物发声表演。从那以后，我也再没听到过任何动物能发出如此美妙的声乐表演了。”2023 年去世的罗杰在 2020 年接受 BBC《The Documentary》播客采访时这样说道。
The couple were amazed by the beautiful, incredibly variable sounds. “They were, as we learned later, the sounds of just one animal,” Katy told NPR in 2015. “Just one animal.”
这对夫妇被那些美妙而多变的声音所震撼。“后来我们才知道，那些声音其实只是一种动物发出的。”凯蒂在 2015 年接受 NPR 采访时说道。“只不过是一种动物而已。”
Watlington lent them a recording, which Katy, Roger and their collaborators (conservationist Scott McVay, mathematician Hella McVay and researcher Eleanora D’Arms) began working to decipher.
沃特林顿把录音资料借给了他们。凯蒂、罗杰以及他们的合作伙伴们——环保主义者斯科特·麦克维、数学家赫拉·麦克维和研究员埃莱奥诺拉·达姆斯——开始着手解读这些录音内容。
The oldest whale recording
有记录以来最古老的鲸鱼影像/最古老的鲸鱼相关记录
There are scattered historic accounts from sailors and whalers describing humpback whale song, but most had faded into obscurity by the early 20th Century.
有一些来自水手和捕鲸人的历史记载，描述了座头鲸的歌声。不过，到了 20 世纪初，这些记载大多已经被人遗忘了。
In 2026, an even older 1949 recording of humpback whales was discovered. The scientists who recorded it near Bermuda didn’t know what it was at the time, though, and simply labelled it “fish noises”.
2026 年，人们又发现了一段更为古老的录音，那是 1949 年录制的座头鲸声音。不过，当时在百慕大附近录制这些声音的科学家们并不清楚那是什么声音，只是将其标记为“鱼类发出的声音”。
They realised that the sounds were being repeated in long, predictable patterns. “You couldn’t listen to it 100 times as I have done without realising that slowly,” Roger told the BBC in 2020. “When an animal makes a sound which is rhythmic and repeats itself, it is defined as being singing.” Sometimes the songs would go on for up to half an hour, only to be repeated again and again.
他们发现，这些声音以有规律的节奏反复出现。“没人能像我那样反复聆听 100 次而不察觉到其中的规律性，”罗杰在 2020 年对 BBC 说道。“当动物发出有节奏且反复出现的声音时，我们就可以称其为‘歌唱’。”有时候，这些“歌声”会持续半个小时之久，之后又会再次重复。
People generally knew at the time that whales produced sounds, says Nan Hauser, a whale researcher and director of the Center for Cetacean Research and Conservation in the Cook Islands. But realising this was song was “an enormous conceptual leap… from an animal making noises to an animal producing an extraordinarily elaborate, organised acoustic display”.
库克群岛鲸类研究与保护中心的负责人、鲸类研究员南·豪泽表示，当时人们普遍知道鲸鱼会发出声音。但要将这些声音理解为“歌声”，则是一个巨大的概念上的飞跃——“从认为动物只是发出各种声音，到认识到动物实际上能创造出极其复杂、有规律的声波信号”。
Songs of the Humpback Whale
座头鲸之歌
Roger, an environmentalist dedicated to saving what he would refer to as the “wild world”, quickly realised he had more in his hands than a scientific discovery.
罗杰是一位致力于保护他所谓的“野生世界”的环保主义者。他很快意识到，自己所取得的成就远远超乎一项科学发现的范畴。
He began playing the tracks to anyone who would listen: at anti-whaling protests, at conferences, at dinner parties. “He was like a little kid with a new toy that everybody had to listen to,” says Iain Kerr, chief executive of Ocean Alliance, a US-based non-profit that Roger Payne went on to found. “And really what a catalyst it was… to suddenly go, ‘Oh my god, these are sort of singer-poets, composers’.”
他愿意把那些音乐作品分享给任何愿意倾听的人：在反捕鲸抗议活动中、在各种会议上、在晚宴上……“他就像一个拿着新玩具的小孩，大家都不得不听他演奏，”罗杰·佩恩后来创立的美国非营利组织“海洋联盟”的首席执行官伊恩·克尔说道。“这真是个了不起的催化剂……人们突然意识到：‘哦，原来这些人都是诗人兼作曲家啊。’”
Song is quite an unusual behaviour in the natural world, and its new association with whales resonated with people, says Andy Rogan, a marine mammal biologist and science and conservation director at Ocean Alliance. Apart from humans, it was really just birds that were thought to sing, he says.
据海洋联盟的海洋哺乳动物生物学家兼科学与保护项目负责人安迪·罗根所说，歌唱在自然界中其实是一种相当罕见的行为。而鲸鱼会歌唱这一现象，自然引起了人们的兴趣。他说，除了人类之外，人们原本认为只有鸟类才会歌唱。
“On one level it’s not necessarily that different from another animal behaviour… [But] what’s the purpose of going for half an hour? For an animal that takes up a lot of mental capacity.”
“从某种层面上说，这不一定和其他动物的行为有太大区别……可是去半小时有什么意义？对于一只需要大量精神能力的动物来说。”
In 1970, Roger, Katy and Watlington released Songs of the Humpback Whale, an album containing five recordings of humpback whales, chosen specifically for their beauty and power to move humans.
1970 年，罗杰、凯蒂和沃特林顿发行了《座头鲸之歌》，这是一张包含五张座头鲸录音的专辑，这些鲸鱼的美丽和能操控人类的力量被特别选中。
The album was a resounding success, rapidly bringing the haunting sounds of humpbacks to millions of people. It sold more than 125,000 copies – making it the biggest selling nature album in history – and an extract was sent to all 10.5 million National Geographic subscribers, the largest single pressing in recording history. “No one had really heard anything like this before,” says Kerr.
这张专辑取得了巨大成功，迅速将座头鲸令人难忘的声音带给了数百万人。该专辑销量超过 125,000 张——成为历史上销量最高的自然专辑——并有一段精选发给了所有 1050 万国家地理订阅者，创下录音史上最大单次压片。“以前没人真正听过这样的声音，”克尔说。
Ocean Alliance 海洋联盟
Roger understood, says Hauser, that if you wanted people to care about whales, they first had to experience them in some way (Credit: Ocean Alliance)
豪泽说，罗杰明白：如果想让人们关心鲸鱼，就必须让他们先以某种方式亲身接触鲸鱼。（图片来源：Ocean Alliance）
Roger used the album to drum up support for whale protection, sending out copies to everyone from the Beatles to Bob Dylan. Singers Judy Collins and Kate Bush featured whale song in their albums. Extracts were used in a 1986 film Star Trek film, in a time travel plot about rescuing humpback whales from extinction. In 1977, an excerpt was even launched into space, on the Voyager 1 Golden Record phonograph.
罗杰利用这张专辑来呼吁人们保护鲸鱼。他把专辑副本送给了从披头士乐队到鲍勃·迪伦的众多艺人。朱迪·柯林斯和凯特·布什也在自己的专辑中收录了鲸鱼的歌声。1986 年，这部专辑的片段被用在一部《星际迷航》电影中，该电影讲述的是关于拯救座头鲸免于灭绝的故事。1977 年，这张专辑的片段还被刻在了“旅行者 1 号”探测器上，随同探测器一起被送入了太空。
A changed perception 观念的转变
Exposure to the sounds of large whales before 1970 was rare, says Max Bridge, an environmental historian at Harvard University in the US who wrote a recent paper on the history of humpback whale song. “In popular movies and cartoons in the 1960s, fictional large whales are usually either silent or make beastly growling, grunting sounds.”
美国哈佛大学的环境历史学家马克斯·布里奇指出，1970 年之前，人们很少能听到大型鲸鱼的声音。他在最近一篇关于座头鲸歌声历史的论文中提到了这一点。“在 20 世纪的 60 年代，流行电影和卡通作品中，虚构的大型鲸鱼要么不发出声音，要么只会发出低沉的吼叫声或咕噜声。”
The album’s release formed part of a wider shift in the public’s perception of whales at the time, says Rogan. Whales were previously often seen as something to fear, as in stories like Moby Dick, or as a commodity, he says. “Whales are [now] part of that upper echelon of charismatic wildlife that we all grow up with… I don’t think that was the case before these songs came out.”
罗根说，这张专辑的发行体现了当时公众对鲸鱼观念的转变。他解释说，过去，鲸鱼常常被视作令人恐惧的生物，就像《白鲸记》中所描述的那样；或者被当作一种商品来对待。“现在，鲸鱼已经属于那种我们从小就熟知的、具有魅力的野生动物之一了……我觉得，在这些歌曲问世之前，情况并非如此。”
Hunted for centuries for everything from oil used for lighting and soap to the ambergris used in perfumes, by the early 1970s, several whale species were on the brink of extinction. This included humpbacks: less than 5% of their pre-whaling numbers remained.
几个世纪以来，鲸鱼被人类捕杀殆尽，人们利用鲸鱼的脂肪来制作照明用油和肥皂，还用鲸鱼的龙涎香来制作香水。到了 20 世纪 70 年代初，几种鲸鱼已经濒临灭绝。其中包括座头鲸：其数量仅相当于捕鲸之前的 5%左右。
Why do whales sing? 为什么鲸鱼会歌唱呢？
Even today, it’s not known exactly why humpback whales sing.
时至今日，人们仍然不清楚座头鲸为何会歌唱。
Since it’s mainly males that sing, it’s often thought to be related to mating, such as attracting females or warding off competing males. But it could be far more complicated.
由于主要是雄性负责歌唱，人们通常认为这种行为与交配有关，比如用来吸引雌性或赶走竞争对手的雄性。但实际上，其背后的原因可能要复杂得多。
Some scientists suggest it could be a form of long-range communication and echolocation, with animals changing the pitch to help create maps of their underwater worlds. “A singer may be advertising something about himself,” says Hauser. “There may be social functions that we haven’t recognised yet.”
一些科学家认为，这可能是一种远程交流或回声定位的方式：动物通过改变音调来帮助自己了解水下环境的情况。“歌手的歌声或许是在向他人传递某种信息，”豪泽说。“也许其中还包含着我们尚未意识到的社交功能。”
Together with mid-1970s images of whales being harpooned taken by a newly-formed Greenpeace, Songs of the Humpback Whales helped to galvanised a fledgling anti-whaling movement. “[It] allowed ordinary people to hear whales in their own homes,” says Hauser. “You didn’t need to be a scientist to be moved by it.”
与 20 世纪 70 年代中期由刚刚成立的绿色和平组织拍摄的、关于鲸鱼被捕鲸者用鱼叉刺中的照片一样，《座头鲸之歌》也极大地推动了当时刚刚兴起的反捕鲸运动。豪泽说：“这本书让普通人也能在自己的家中听到鲸鱼的叫声。不需要成为科学家，也能被这些画面所打动。”
Amidst rising pressure, in 1972, the US Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and in 1982 a legally binding global moratorium on commercial whaling was passed, followed by a full ban in 1985-86.
在压力日益增大的背景下，美国国会在 1972 年通过了《海洋哺乳动物保护法》。1982 年，全球范围内又通过了具有法律约束力的商业捕鲸禁令。随后，在 1985 年至 1986 年间，商业捕鲸被彻底禁止。
Populations of some whales began to increase, and humpbacks in particular have since seen a remarkable recovery. In some places, they are now even being seen in super-groups of hundreds at a time.
某些鲸类的数量开始增加，其中座头鲸的恢复情况尤为显著。在某些地区，现在甚至可以看到成百上千只座头鲸聚集在一起的现象。
That ’70s sound 那种 70 年代的风格/那种具有 70 年代特色的音乐风格
The discovery of whale song formed part of a wider revolution in environmentalism and understanding of animal intelligence occurring at the time.
鲸歌的发现，其实是当时在环境保护领域以及动物智力研究方面所发生的更大范围变革的一部分。
Rachel Carson had published Silent Spring in 1962, examining the environmental impact of synthetic pesticides. The first Earth Day in 1970 mobilised some 20 million people, while scientists like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey were busy transforming our understanding of other intelligent primates.
1962 年，雷切尔·卡森出版了《寂静的春天》一书，书中详细探讨了合成杀虫剂对环境造成的影响。1970 年，第一个地球日动员了约 2000 万人参与其中。与此同时，简·古道尔和黛安·福西等科学家们则致力于改变人们对其他智能灵长类动物的认知。
Whale song started being seen as a symbol of a broader ecological crises, even as “mournful pleas on the part of the natural world”, says Bridge. By the late 1970s, though, US popular culture became more cynical towards symbols of earnest environmentalism like whales or their song, they add, then in the 1980s it was adopted as a key sound of New Age music. Even today it is still largely viewed as a kind of relaxant for the stresses of white-collar life, adds Bridge.
布里奇指出，鲸歌开始被视为更广泛的生态危机的象征，可以被看作是“大自然发出的悲叹”。不过，到了 20 世纪 70 年代末，美国的流行文化对鲸鱼及其歌声这类象征着环保意识的元素变得更为冷漠。而到了 80 年代，鲸歌又成为了新世纪音乐中的重要元素。布里奇还指出，时至今日，鲸歌仍然被视作一种能缓解白领生活压力的音乐元素。
Ocean Alliance 海洋联盟
Songs of The Humpback Whale has been credited with invigorating the emerging Save The Whale movement (Credit: Ocean Alliance)
《座头鲸之歌》被认为为新兴的“拯救鲸鱼”运动注入了活力。（图片来源：Ocean Alliance）
At the same time, whale song discovery helped kickstart modern whale biology in the previously poorly studied animals, says Rogan.
罗根指出，对鲸鱼歌声的发现，也促进了现代鲸类生物学的研究。在此之前，人们对鲸鱼的了解相当有限。
Katy discovered that all males in one area will sing roughly the same song – and that this song evolves over time. We now know these songs can also spread from population to population across enormous distances, sometimes rapidly replacing a previous local favourite. “We’re watching culture move through an ocean,” says Hauser.
凯蒂发现，某个地区的所有雄性动物都会唱大致相同的歌曲——而且这些歌曲会随着时间的推移而发生变化。我们现在知道，这些歌曲还可以在各个种群之间传播，传播范围极广，有时甚至会迅速取代原本流行的歌曲。“我们正在目睹文化在‘海洋’中的传播过程，”豪泽说道。
And while humpbacks have the most complex known song among whales (it even shows some hallmarks of human language), the sounds of other whales have also astonished researchers. Sperm whales, for example, which converse in Morse code-like sequences of clicks known as codas, are now known to have regional dialects, while males also make separate slower, deeper and enormously loud clicks. And the immense calls of the blue whale, too low for the human ear to pick up, can travel up to 1,000 miles (1,600km).
虽然座头鲸拥有鲸类中最为复杂的鸣叫方式（其鸣叫甚至具有类似人类语言的特征），但其他鲸类的鸣叫也令研究人员惊叹不已。例如，抹香鲸会用类似摩斯电码的信号来交流，现在人们发现，抹香鲸还有不同的“方言”；雄性抹香鲸还会发出节奏较慢、音调较低且音量巨大的鸣叫。而蓝鲸的鸣叫声则低得人类耳朵无法听到，不过这种鸣叫可以传播 1,000 英里（1,600 公里）远。
Some researchers are even trying to converse with whales and decipher what they are saying. In later life, Roger became involved in this effort.
一些研究人员甚至试图与鲸鱼进行交流，试图理解它们在说什么。罗杰在晚年也参与了这项工作。
There are now thousands of recordings of whale sounds and other nature sounds pleasing to the human ear. Still, Kerr argues, none quite have the “harmony or the sort of enchanting nature” of those ’70s tracks. “There’s a wonderful sort of aesthetic to it, this sort of crackling, haunting voice from the deep.”
如今，已经有成千上万的鲸鱼叫声以及其他令人类耳目愉悦的自然声音被记录下来。不过，克尔认为，没有任何一种声音能像上世纪 70 年代那些录音那样，拥有那种“和谐感或迷人的特质”。 “那种来自深海的声音，真是有一种美妙的美学价值。”
Perhaps the period just happened to feature especially beautiful humpback whale song, says Alyssa Wile, who is in charge of digitising and archiving Ocean Alliance’s vast collection archive of marine mammal sounds from the 1950s to 1990s, including many recorded by Katy and Roger.
也许，恰巧在那个时期，座头鲸的歌声格外美妙动听。负责将“海洋联盟”自 20 世纪 50 年代到 90 年代期间收集到的大量海洋哺乳动物声音资料进行数字化处理和保存的艾丽莎·威尔如此说道。这些录音中有很多是由凯蒂和罗杰录制的。
Wile still remembers listening to Songs of the Humpback Whale for the first time as a child. “It’s extraordinary, and every time I listen to it, I do get the chills.”
威尔仍然记得自己小时候第一次听到《座头鲸之歌》的情景。“那真是美妙极了，每次听到这首歌，我都觉得毛骨悚然。”
Today, whales compete within a very different soundscape of anthropogenic noise, making protecting older recordings incredibly important, she says. “These recordings preserve a particular moment in space and time as well as particular individuals,” she says. “We can track those changes over time, how whales are communicating differently, how the soundscape itself is different.”
她说，如今，鲸鱼在充满人为噪音的声环境中生存。因此，保护那些古老的录音资料就显得尤为重要。“这些录音记录了特定时空中的景象，以及那些个体鲸鱼的情况，”她说。“我们可以通过这些录音来了解随着时间的推移，鲸鱼的交流方式发生了怎样的变化，以及整个声环境又有了怎样的改变。”
Whales still face many threats, from ship strikes and entanglement in nets to ongoing whaling in some countries to noise pollution and warming seas. Today, one in four whale species is threatened with extinction, up from one in seven in 1991.
鲸鱼仍然面临着诸多威胁：既有船只的撞击和渔网缠绕，也有某些国家继续进行的捕鲸活动；此外，噪音污染和海洋温度上升也威胁着鲸鱼的生存。如今，四分之一的鲸鱼物种面临灭绝的威胁，而 1991 时这一比例仅为七分之一。
Still, Songs of the Humpback Whale “was unquestionably one of the great catalysts” towards protecting whales, says Hauser. “Most people would never see a living humpback whale, but suddenly they could put a record on and hear one,” she says. “Suddenly the conversation wasn’t simply, ‘How many whales remain?’. It became ‘What kind of beings are we killing?'”
不过，豪泽表示，《座头鲸之歌》无疑是为保护鲸鱼做出了巨大贡献的作品之一。“大多数人永远无缘亲眼见到活着的座头鲸，但通过听这张唱片，他们就能感受到座头鲸的存在，”她说。“这样一来，人们的讨论重点就不再是‘还剩下多少头鲸鱼’，而是‘我们究竟在杀害什么样的生物’。”
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