On 1993, Oz Goffman, Dr. Danny Kerem and Oren Sonin began collecting data from Israeli fishermen through the XT 4 wireless radio station, which operated under the Division of Fisheries, the Navy and Civilians. Thus, a database was created documenting the marine mammals on the shores of the country, in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Gulf of Eilat and Suez.

At the end of the summer of 1994, under the sponsorship of the Center for Marine Studies at the Leon Recanati Institute of Marine Studies at the University of Haifa, additional dolphin lovers joined the group. They all had a common vision: to study and preserve the marine mammal population in Israel. This is how the “Hand for Marine Mammals” (yad la yonek ha’yami) organization was established. Subsequently, the name of the association was changed to IMMRAC (Mahmali) – Israeli marine mammal research and conservation