Dear MARMAMers, We are pleased to announce the general release of our DISCOVERY Photo-Identification software. DISCOVERY was designed to be a comprehensive data-management system to process, store, manage, visualize and analyze all photo-identification information and associated/unassociated data for single or multi-study site and/or species application. DISCOVERY assists at all processing/data entry levels from filtering of raw photographic data, filenaming routines, incoming/group matching, catalog individual-ID matching, GPS data extraction, sighting information with environmental, geographic, and numerous user-defined parameters as well as host of any other user-defined datasheets. DISCOVERY also provides GIS displays of sighting/individual/effort data and basic analyses of the data with export options to other tools, such as MARK, SOCPROG, etc. We believe DISCOVERY is adaptable to any species of marine mammals (or non-marine mammal) and particularly useful for maintaining a single database for research projects collecting data at large geographical scales and between multiple research teams working on different databases. DISCOVERY can also easily facilitate integration of existing data collected and stored by other means, such as Microsoft Access/Excel. We believe there are a number of dynamic capabilities in DISCOVERY to meet a multitude of project-specific requirements and user-specific needs. DISCOVERY is a freely-available software. To find out more about DISCOVERY's capabilities and/or to download the software. Please visit the software website at: <http://www.biosch.hku.hk/ecology/staffhp/lk/Discovery> http://www.biosch.hku.hk/ecology/staffhp/lk/Discovery The DISCOVERY development team will attempt their best to address any questions or issues users may have with the software. We ask that you place any inquires on the forum provided on the website. Best wishes on your research endeavors, Glenn Gailey Leszek Karczmarski __________________________________ Cetacean Ecology Lab The Swire Institute of Marine Science The University of Hong Kong Cape d'Aguilar, Shek O, Hong Kong Website: http://www.hku-cetacean-ecology.net