Assessment of Pesticide, Dioxin-like Polychlorinated Biphenyl, and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Existence around Galindez Island, and Comparison with the Organic Pollution Bibliography of the Antarctic Peninsula

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is very well designed, well done and discussed with all the necessary details in the applied methods of work as well as an adequate review of the literature.

The paper is excellently written, however, since the subject of research is residues of organic substances, and modified methods were used and the results for moss and sediment are lower than the limit of detection of applied methods, I propose to separate sample preparation methods from the results of modified methods optimisation  methods were examined. So I suggest adding a special chapter on the optimization results of modified methods.

Author Response

Please find attached file to see the response to Reviewer #1

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting monitoring study of pesticides, dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in different matrices collected around Galindez Island, in Antarctic Peninsula, in which compounds never found before in Antarctic were found to occur. A lack that can be found is the very low number of samples analysed, although this might be due to the peculiarity of the investigation area.

Please check the title for correct English form, or in fact , as I suggest below change the title introducing the aspect of the comparison with bibliography.

In general the manuscript is well understandable but English must be improved since several grammar errors are present.

Methods are very detailed, it is up to the editor/journal to underline whether they are too much detailed.

Legend of figure 2 should specify that reported values are average values, as stated in the text.

Line 106 what does it means “mixed separately” each fish separately, each species ? sample from each species were pulled ? since we then see only a single data result per species ? this must be well clarified.

The number of fish samples is very low, normally not acceptable for a scientific paper, nevertheless, since toxicological information from antarctic peninsula are scarce they might be acceptables but the author must explain well in the text why the number is so small; perhaps difficulties in sampling ?

Considering the good work of review of the pre-existing papers on the subject and the comparisons made with the previous data, perhaps it would be appropriate to emphasize this aspect more, maybe including it also in the title of the work. This could add value to the work and compensate for the small number of data presented.

Author Response

Please find attached file to see the response to Reviewer #2

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf