Whale Tales and Glitter No. 9: Earth Day and Save the Whales! A short history of both and their impact on my life.

Welcome to Whale Tales and Glitter Issue # 9. Are you reading this on the web or did you get it as a forward? If you Subscribe https://www.whaletalesandglitter.com/ you’ll get all the whale-y goodness sent right to your inbox. If you’d like to support Whale Tales and Glitter there’s now a ko-fi page https://ko-fi.com/katepennington 

Earth Day holds a special place in my heart, not just because awareness of our amazing world and our part in her health and our wellbeing is important. It’s also a part of my personal history.

When I was three my parents took me to an amazing event at a park near our house in Greenwich Village, NY. There were tons of people everywhere, but I was safe on my father’s shoulders. I only remember the photo of that moment as the photo itself has been lost. Union Square park was one of the hubs for the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, with an estimated 100,000 people flowing through it across the day. Twenty years later, not long after college, I volunteered to work for the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in Times Square, NY. It was a spectacular day celebrating twenty years of the evolving work and awareness of our need to protect the world we live on. Millions of people attended events all around the world. 

In the years between these two moments I lived the “Don’t drip the Apple dry” campaign - turning off faucets everywhere I went. Going to the farmers markets with my parents (in the same park) and seeing how the seasons change through the foods and flowers they sold. I saw Star Trek IV The Voyage Home more times than I can count. Made my friends listen to whale songs on my answering machine and went whale watching for the first time. While Earth Day always included the oceans and wasn’t explicitly dedicated to them, it did lead to the Save the Whale / Whale conservation work that continues today.

Earth Day

In simple terms Earth Day was, and still is, a day of action dedicated to learning about, and working towards, environmental health for all beings and the planet we call home. It began because there were big problems that needed ideas and actions to fix… kind of like today.

Growing up in NYC, everyone knew that the Hudson River was deeply polluted. There was a joke that if a tourist fell in they’d die in minutes but if a NYer fell in we’d be fine because we’d already been exposed to most of it just walking around. I’m certain there were similar ‘jokes’ in other places. These stories were symptomatic of the growing problem and concerns around the use of pesticides like DDT and other chemicals. Works like Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ had begun to show just how harmful these chemicals were to the mental and physical health of humans and animals. That Earth Day came into being on the heals of the ears of ‘Peace and Love’ / war protests makes perfect sense looking back. These tensions led San Francisco activist John McConnell and Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, separately, to suggest the idea of a nation wide event to get people on the streets and taking action to save the planet.  McConnell’s idea was to honor the earth and peace on the Spring Equinox. Nelson’s plan was for an environmental teach-in on April 22. The name Earth Day came from copywriter Julian Koening. And the first Earth Day was born on April 22, 1970 with an estimated 20 million people around the US participating. 

“The event was so successful that it led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passage of foundational laws: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. These laws didn’t just pass, they reshaped public health, industrial standards, and conservation efforts across the U.S.” - Earth Day 2026: Origins, Facts, Theme, and How to Make an Impact

Earth Day went international in 1990 with organized events in more than 140 countries. By 2020, Earth Day was celebrated by over 100 million people around the world. 

Save the Whales

Hand in hand with learning about “the hole in the Ozone layer” and the early recycling efforts, that lead to Earth day, was the news that “industrial whaling” had never ended. In fact, they’d only gotten more efficient. Three things had an enormous part making the public aware of the plight of whales: Greenpeace, the Save the Whales organization, and whale songs. 

Greenpeace is a network of independent organizations who use non-violent confrontation to bring awareness and action to environmental issues around the world.  The organization began to take shape in 1971 in Canada. Their work has focused on nuclear weapons tests, oil pipelines, and industrial whaling. They are probably best known for placing small ships between whales and the harpoons pointed at them from whaling ships. In 1975 photographer and early member of Greenpeace, Rex Weyler took a photograph that landed Greenpeace and commercial whaling on the front page of nearly every newspaper. (Link: TW for animal harm) In it a massive Soviet whaling (factory) ship towers over the viewer, a large metal harpoon set, and ready to fly again from the top. At bottom, in the water, is a large whale, belly up, with a bloody gash in its side from a harpoon. It was / is graphic and devastating. This photo and others that followed helped bring about the 1982 moratorium on commercial whaling.

The Save the Whales organization began in 1977 with a t-shirt of a blue whale and the words: Save The Whales drawn by its then 14 year old, co-founder, Maris Sidenstecker II. She’d been learning about whales and the struggles they were facing. She she gave away the first batch of t-shirts she had made up and things snowballed from there. Over the years the organization has brought whale and marine mammal eduction to schools around the country, helped to keep animals out of aquariums, and worked to stop the US Navy from performing hull integrity tests on their ships in the Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary.

Published in 1970 by Roger and Katy based on recordings they collected with US Navy Engineer Frank Watlington, “Songs of the Humpback whales” gave voice to the whales people were falling in love. The fact that Humpback whale songs in particular, are complex with repeated patterns that evolve over time in ways similar human music, shifted the idea of whales from ‘animals’ to watch in a show, to ‘beings with culture’ similar to us. It did not hurt that nearly twenty years later those sounds would be used in Star Trek IV The Voyage Home, making Humpback whales the stars of the most profitable Star Trek movie up to that point and exposing even more people to their voices.

Earth Day 2026

The first Earth Day was the perfect storm of awareness and action that got millions of people sorting their garbage, demanding regulations on pesticides and pushing for an end to industrial wailing. It also lead to an innumerable number of people being inspired to become Marine Biologist, Zoologists, Oceanographers, and Science Communicators, myself included. 

In 2026 it feels both more important and almost impossible to celebrate Earth Day.  We have heat where we expected cold, dry winds where there should be rain. Fire storms raging and floods following. It’s a tough time to be an Earthling, especially since most of what’s going on are processes we helped speed up. And yet, we have seen enormous gains since the first Earth Day. Renewable sources of energy are taking off around the world and, regardless of what a whole lot of people wanna say, they are allowing us to slowly phase out high emission based fuels like coal and gas. (Links) When it comes to whales there have been enormous gains. Many populations around the world have rebounded and some show signs of growth, even as warming oceans play havoc with their feeding grounds and biological processes. There are problems to be addressed, yes, but that’s part of what Earth Day is about. 

A lot of the events for Earth Day are focused on educating children with games, and activities (sometimes with touchable animals involved) about climate change and environmental work. Others are geared to older kids / teenagers and adults with a focus on immediate, and physical actions like beach and park clean ups, tree planting, or helping out in a community garden. 

Other options for celebrating Earth Day include the vast array of nature documentaries - many online, some available through libraries, and of course tons of books to dive into.  There are also loads of people and organizations doing climate work and many of them have their own books, magazines and webpages of filled with information. And of course, if you have the funds, there are plenty of groups that need support locally and globally. And if you do nothing else, try to get outside - in your backyard, a beach,  on a boat, up on the top of a mountain (or hill). Take a deep breath. Look around you. This is what we are fighting for.

Below are some links for additional information on Earth Day, it history, current issues, and ideas for how to celebrate. Note: most countries, cities, and towns should have some listings for planned events, as will local museums, zoos, and aquariums, they websites should have the details. I’ve also added a few lists of nonprofits that folx might want to donate to.

Earthday.org Announces Global Theme Earth Day, April 22, 2026: Our Power, Our Planet

Earth Day 2026: What’s Happening Across the Planet Right Now

Make Every Voice Count This Earth Day

Celebrate Earth Day Climate Action 2026 with California State Parks Foundation 

Give.Org 

Impactful.ninja

Virtueimpact.com 

Spotlight: Katy Payne, bioacoustics pioneer

Katy Payne does not have a doctorate or much in the way of papers with her name on them but her curiosity and early love of music lead to monumental breakthroughs in our understand of whale song and elephant communication. 

Born in in Ithaca, NY in 1937 Payne studied biology and music at Cornell University, where her father was a professor.  In 1966 she and her then husband, Dr. Roger Payne, began studying recordings US Navy Engineer Frank Watlington had captured of ‘odd sounds’ in the ocean. Payne’s ear for music gave her a unique perspective on the sounds which eventually led to the understanding that Humpback whale songs contained not random sounds but musical phrases and distinct, repeated patterns.  She and her fellow researchers developed a system of photographing the tail flukes of each whale they they saw - a pattern which, in Humpbacks, is as distinct as a fingerprint and can be used to ID individual whales. With that identification mark, they started a catalogue of Humpback whales with a technique still used today. Over time they were able to connect recordings of specific individuals with the IDs of the whales singing, allowing them to build an understanding of who, what, and when they sing. (HappyWhale.com where I submit my whale photos, uses this process.)

Decades later, life brought Payne back to land and to a zoo in Portland where she ended up listening to a group of elephants. The elephants were clearly communicating, somehow, but the humans couldn’t hear anything. After hours of listening while the elephants moved around the large yard, Payne noticed shifts of air pressure as the elephants passed by. Payne’s musical background again offered a clue. The air shifts were sounds the humans could feel, like a deep bass note Payne remembered from singing in a choir, but too deep for them to hear. Using recordings and tech to modify the sounds, the team determined that elephants speak on an infrasonic level. 

In 1999 she founded Cornell‘s Elephant Listening Project. The organization focuses on forest elephants, and has built the world’s largest archive of sounds from Central Africa.  She also published “Silent Thunder, In the Presence of Elephants” which is part memoir and part observer’s notes about her early experiences with elephants. In 2002 Cornell Lab of Ornithology announced the Katharine B. Payne Fellowship Program in Conservation Bioacoustics. The Fellowship does not require applicants to have an advanced degree. 

Note:  Silent Thunder is only available in print but the Internet Archive has a scanned version available for reading.  Book. Scanned/e-view (requires a free membership):

Additional Links: 

On Being with Krista Tippett, Katy Payne episode: In the Presence of Elephants and Whales

NPR: It Took A Musician's Ear To Decode The Complex Song In Whale Calls 

The Naming of Whales: Megaptera novaeangliae 

Megaptera novaeangliae is the scientific name for Humpbacks. Megaptera from the Greek for giant wing (mega / ptera) which is fairly accurate description for their pectoral fins which are usual a 1/3 or more the length of their bodies and are the largest pectoral fins of any whale. Novaeangliae is Latin for New England, where most of the early sightings of Humpbacks by Western scientists were made in the late 1700s. 

 Good Ocean News!

On January 17, 2026 the High Seas Treaty officially went into effect. This treaty, known formally as  the Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), is a landmark global accord to protect marine life in the high seas and the deep seabed - all areas which lie outside of any country’s jurisdiction. The treaty, signed by 60 countries to date, applies to more than two thirds of our oceans.  There are four core pillars of the High Seas Treaty: 

1. Marine genetic resources and benefit-sharing, ensuring discoveries from marine organisms benefit all humanity.

2. Area-based management tools, enabling the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs) in international waters.

3. Environmental impact assessments which require countries to evaluate how proposed activities could affect fragile marine ecosystems. 

4. Capacity-building and technology transfer, helping developing countries participate fully in ocean research and conservation. 

This UN treaty is incredibly important to ocean life, and really all life, given how much of our planet is covered by water. Prior to this agreement the areas between national waters had no common rules or protections in place which left millions of vital marine areas open to poaching, pollution, and overuse. 

Happy Spring! 

Kate