Since its founding under Payne, and later under the stewardship of current CEO Dr. Iain Kerr, Ocean Alliance has been an important group in the worldwide effort to research and protect great whales. They are well-respected for developing benign research techniques, and in the process proving that far more can be learnt from a live whale than from a dead one. Many of their exploits have brought them closely into the public eye, leading Payne to describe the group as ""the group you don’t know you know"". During the 1990s, Payne established that the way to save whales would be to show them to the world, and Ocean Alliance became involved in over forty documentaries including "In the Company of Whales" and the IMAX film "Whales".