Fi.S.A.R.: A data-managing and processing software for automated telemetry systems

Ultrasonic telemetry systems are increasingly used in studies on the behavioral ecology of marine and freshwater animals. Systems based on automated omnidirectional receivers in particular offer a powerful and relatively cheap tool to provide presence/absence data of tagged animals, but they do not provide the geographic position of the transmitters. In this paper a new software called FiSAR (Fish-finder Software for Automated Receivers), developed for application with Vemco VR1/VR2 receivers, is presented (available at www.marecofree.org/download.asp). FiSAR is able to manage large datasets as well as to calculate the activity center of each transmitter from simple presence/absence data. This is achieved through (1) the collation of the data collected by each receiver in a unique MS Access cross-table, and (2) the use of the Simpfendorfer et al. (2002) algorithm. The resulting cross-table can be easily exported to most statistical packages for further analysis.