GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Two men who live half a world apart and have spent years crusading against the whaling industry met again in Gloucester Harbor.

Takeshi Hara, a Japanese professor and journalist, came to Gloucester to interview American biologist Roger Payne, the man noted for the discovery that humpback whales sing.

They were aboard the 93-foot Odyssey, which recently returned to Gloucester, a place it would like to call its home port. The red-hulled Odyssey is a research vessel of Ocean Alliance, an environmental group Payne founded in 1971.

The Odyssey also was used as the platform for filming the IMAX movie, "Whales: The IMAX Experience," which is showing at the New England Aquarium.

Hara, who works in the area of environment and sustainable development, met with Payne as part of his research for what will be a two-page spread in Tokyo's Mainichi Shimbun, a major Japanese newspaper.

The story will focus on recent research by Ocean Alliance, whose mission is broader than studying whales. The research encompasses pollution and its far-reaching impact on the environment, with the recent research done through testing for chemicals and other contaminants in whale blubber and skin samples.

The Odyssey spent 5 1/2 years in an 80,000-mile circumnavigation of the globe for this environmental research.

Payne, who discovered in the 1960s that humpback whales sing distinctive songs to each other, has spent a lifetime studying whales. In a 1979 National Geographic article, he predicted that pollution would replace the harpoon as the next great threat to whales.

Gloucester is a familiar place for the Odyssey, which spent many months at the Gloucester Marine Railways.

"It would be a dream come true to have a home here," said Payne, who lives in Vermont. "The marine research we do is like hand in glove with the marine livelihood in Gloucester. It would be a delight to work with people who know so much about the sea."

Hara, who works at Waseda University in Tokyo and has authored several books, also continues his work as a journalist. As a young journalist, he was the first in Japan to speak out against whaling. At the time, he said, he was in a minority. His view is now shared among the majority of Japanese people, he said.

Just recently, the Japanese began a humpback whale hunt, a move that has sparked international furor among those who oppose whaling. BBC News recently reported that a Japanese whaling fleet set sail for the South Pacific to harpoon humpback whales for the first time in decades, with a goal of up to 1,000 whales, including 50 humpbacks.

"The humpback hunt is the first since a mid-1960s global ban and has drawn strong protests from environmentalists," according to the BBC.

For more information about Ocean Alliance, visit its Web site at OceanAlliance.org.



Gail McCarthy writes for The Gloucester Daily Times of Gloucester, Mass. E-mail her at gmccarthy@ecnnews.com.