Disentangling Microplastic Pollution on Beach Sand of Puerto Princesa, Palawan Island, Philippines: Abundance and Characteristics

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for choosing me to review the article entitled Disentangling microplastic pollution on beach sand of Puerto Princesa, Palawan Island, Philippines: Abundance, distribution, and characteristics. In my opinion, the article deals with issues important in terms of environmental protection and is properly prepared.

I propose to shorten the title a bit to make it more concise. Please explain why the chart uses uppercase letters and sometimes lowercase letters? In the description of Figure 2, it is intended to indicate more precisely when there are significant differences, e.g. different letters mean statistically significant differences (line 151-154).

In my opinion, the rest of the text is acceptable as it stands.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The reviewed article deals with the extremely interesting environmental problem of the occurrence of plastic in the marine coastal zone. After a short introduction, the authors describe the research methodology and present the results of plastic measurements in sandy sediments. The text is complemented by tabular summaries of the determination results and graphs. The applied means of presentation of the research results are appropriate to the presented topic, and the discussion of the research results is comprehensive. Palawan Island is a beautiful place used for tourism. Also, the reviewer had the occasion to visit Palawan. Environmental research in the area should be supported. I would like to congratulate you on a scientific work well done, the article can be printed in its present form.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, thank you for interesting contribution to the field of microplastics. It was for me an interesting study of some in-situ monitoring and assessment of MP contamination. The metods used are reasonable and properly described. I have only fiew remarks or questions:

line 94: icebo4x is correctly written?

Figure 2: for 2a what is a, ab, b? For 2b what is A and B?

Figure 6: for the regression you selected a linear function, is it correct? You calculated r, probably I would include r2 as well and comment or discuss a bit more how strong the correlation is. There issome dependency, but in my opinion rather weak/moderate.

Line 238: In the sentence "It is can be highly..." delete "is" 

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript (Disentangling microplastic pollution on beach sand of Puerto 2 Princesa, Palawan Island, Philippines: Abundance, distribution, and characteristics) is an interesting study.

However, some points have to be considered before recommendation of acceptance.

1- Microplastics have to be unified in one abbreviation (MPs) not (MP) through the whole manuscript.

2- Some complex sentences arise have to be simpler and more comprehensive.

3- The Conclusion has to be rewritten to be more precise.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx