Small-Scale Spatiotemporal Pattern in the Spawning of Pacific Herring (Clupea pallasii) in the Jinhae Bay, Korea, Estimated Using Hydroacoustic Survey
, Wooseok Oh 4, Yang Jae Im 5, Kangseok Hwang 1 and Doo Nam Kim 1
Satoshi Katayama
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript presents a limited amount of data; samples from gill net fishing and records from two kinds of echosounding devices; stationary and mobile vertical trancducers. Some problems with the analysis and enterpretation? The reviewer is not familiar with the software used for the analysis of echosound data, and recommends SONA5 software. This could make it easier to compare the density and the echo strenght distribution (length frequency of the fish) between the devices and the fish catches.
The manuscript may have some interest due to findings of fish in habitat/time that was not expected. It could however, with different data treatment, be an intersting comparison between monitoring methods, especially regarding the mounted equipment, to predict and track the appearance of a fishable stock, and monitoring the annual reproduction success of the species. Pitty with the cameras, identifying the fish species with camaras would be great.
Se comments in the document attached, at lines:
44, 50, 54, 88, 96, 98, 99, 107, 112, 117, 118, 130, 131, 132, 133, 153, 158, 174, 193, 194, 196, 197, 198, 201-207, 213-215, 219-221, 241-242, 247, 256, 263, 277, 314
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,Thank you for your very careful review of our paper, and for the comments, corrections and suggestions that ensued.
A major revision of the paper has been carried out to take all of them into account. And in the process, we believe the paper has been significantly improved. Please see the attachment. Sincerely, Lee
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors conducted intensive surveys to find the spawning activity of herring, which is an important resource, and showed the valuable data. However, I have to say that the credibility of the data on larvae and juvenile is low.
Major comments
I agreed with this surveys found the spawning adult fish occurred in the spawning grounds by the stationary net and the ship-based scientific echosounder in January. For the larvae, although the ship-based and moored scientific echosounders showed high NASCs in April, these NASCs consisted of zooplankton and fish larvae as authors mentioned. No biological information on NASCs were stated in this paper. A photograph of the spawning ground in February was presented in Fig. 7, but no relation with echosounder survey data. Especially planktons generally furnish in spring period. So NASCs detected in the echosounder surveys were likely not fish larvae. I think this research can not present small-scale spatial-temporal pattern of Pacific herring.
Minor comments
44 Was the increasing of herring population caused by climate change?
90 This survey was not operated using nets.
119 “Per operation”???
168 More explanations on the stationary net are needed. Is this fishery? Why is this distant from survey area?
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Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,Thank you for your very careful review of our paper, and for the comments, corrections and suggestions that ensued.
A major revision of the paper has been carried out to take all of them into account. And in the process, we believe the paper has been significantly improved. Please see the attachment. Sincerely, Lee
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
