SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., waving a whale's tooth taken from a crowd of 4,500 who gathered for a save-the-whale rally on behalf of the world's largest mammal.

"We're all interconnected with one another. We're all an endangered species," Brown admitted to a recent convert to the whales' cause, told the rally that ran well into Sunday morning.

The youthful crowd gave a standing ovation to the governor, who had promised to try to save the whale rally that combined a rock concert, energy fair, film show and pop rally.

Brown once refused to sign a bill to protect the California's official marine mammal. It had been in the wrong way, and when he designated Saturday as "Save the Day," some accused him of opportunism.

But Brown said the bill started him thinking about the plight of the whale and at the Zen center he frequents, he has heard more "whale music" — recordings of the animals' undersea cries — and heard country Joe McDonald sing his save-the-whaling songs at a Los Angeles nightclub.

"There was more to this than I'd originally thought," Brown said.

McDonald, John Sebastian and Joni Mitchell were among the entertainers on hand. The rock concert began hours long before the rally. Proceeds were to support court campaigns to impose worldwide limits on whaling.

Brown also gave credit for his conversion to whale watcher to Peter Coyote, who narrated the program with films of whales leaping and singing and playing. He closed by warning that if whales die out, man will "lose half the moon and half of waves overhead and the dull roar of vapor traffic for all eternity."

But the intermissions were eventful. The crowd was invited to "feel" to let off tension and to "whoosh" in imitation of a whale whose undersea cries were played for all to hear.

Migrating whales attract some 20,000 whale watchers to the California coast every year. They also attract Soviet and Japanese whaling ships. But the 10,000 cottas used by some anti-whaling groups as visual persuasion and Japanese goods was criticized as being counterproductive. Brown said the movement needs allies in those countries.

And among the contributors to Saturday night's program were the Japanese manufacturers of Toyota and Datsun cars.