The Patagonia Right Whale program is one of the longest continually running studies on great whales: as of 2014 the program entered its 44th year. Ocean Alliance founder Dr. Roger Payne set up the program in 1970, on realizing that he could identify individual whales based on the patterns of cyamids (whale lice) on their heads. This opened up an enormous opportunity to gain far more information on the life-history of individual whales than had previously been possible. Roger also recognized its significance as it enabled him to learn far more from a live whale than the whaling community was learning from dead whales.