The Biology of Mesopelagic Fishes and Their Catches (1950–2018) by Commercial and Experimental Fisheries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Abstract: The abstract section was not appropriately done. The abstract did not contain the results and conclusion of the study. Follow recommended format.

Introduction: Good. Can be improved upon. Attempts should be made to introduce or describe mesopelagic fish for some non-scientific readers. The introduction to the result section can be brought forward to the introduction section to help intimate the reader on the subject of discussion. Also, some minor corrections have been indicated for your considerations and necessary actions.

Materials and methods: Well written.

Results: Nicely done. However, as indicated, the introductory part can be transferred to the introduction part.

Discussions: Good but requires some minor corrections as indicated in the text for better understanding to the reader.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1: 

This is to respond to your comments (C) below and to provide responses (R). We hope that you will find these responses adequate. We wish to thank you for these comments, which improved our manuscript.

1. C: Too much emphasis on methodology. The abstract contained no information on the result of the study, or the conclusion reached therefrom. R: Agreed, we have shortened the last paragraph of the abstract.
2. C: Suggestion to delete the word ‘FishBase’ from the keywords. R: Agreed, done.
3. C: Suggestion to delete ‘, by’ from line 53. R: Agreed, done.
4. C: Please use the suggested citation form for cite FishBase: Froese, R. and D. Pauly. Editors. 2021. FishBase. World Wide Web electronic publication. www.fishbase.org, version (06/2021). R: Agreed, done.
5. C: Lines 65-66 Paraphrase sentence for clearer meaning. R: Agreed, the sentence was modified.
6. C: Line 67 - These parameters need to be appropriately defined. R: Agreed, the sentence was modified to include a definition of the parameters.
7. C: Suggestion to remove “,” from line 72. R: Agreed, done.
8. C: Lines 77-80 - Too long sentence. Breakdown to simpler ones for easier understanding. R: Agreed, this was broken into two sentences.
9. C: Lines 87-90 - My suggestions are that this introduction to mesopelagic fish may be best taken to the the introductory section or the materials and methods as the case may be. Typo edits included. R: Agreed, these two sentences were moved to the introduction. Typos were corrected where appropriate.
10. C: Line 91 - Please crosscheck this system of citation. R: All citations were checked and renumbered also because of the moving text from results to introduction.
11. C: Typo on line 93. R: Agreed, fixed
12. C: Lines 100-103 - Paraphrase. Which of Neoscopelidae and Myctophidae was subdivided into the various components? Including typos. R: After mention of Myctophidae, we broke the sentence into two to avoid confusion. Typos were fixed.
13. C: Typos on line 106. R: Agreed, fixed.
14. C: Table 1 - What does this mean? Condition factor? R: K is not condition factor, it is the growth coefficient of the von Bertalanffy growth formula, which is defined as suggested above.
15. C: What is SL? Standard lenght? Should be provided below the table. R: SL is standard length, i.e., the body length from the snout to the caudal peduncle. This was added to the table caption.
16. C: Figure 2 caption - This title does not capture the element of mesopelagic fish represented by the map, and thus, cannot stand on its own. R: the caption was modified to read “Biomass of mesopelagics (in g·m^-3) based on data in Gjøsaeter and Kawaguchi [2], with mean estimates per stratum corrected using ArcGIS. Light blue refers to low densities of mesopelagics, dark blue to high densities; white refers to unsampled sea areas, and yellow to land.”
17. C: Line 164 – correction on ArcGIS 9.0. R: Agreed, done.
18. C: Typos on lines 197, 240, 248, 250, 251. R: Agreed, fixed
19. C: Lines 271-273 - This sentence could be broken down to simpler ones for better understanding. R: Agreed, the sentence was broken down.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments on The biology of mesopelagic fishes and their catches (1950-2018) by commercial and experimental fisheries:

• Add some of the most important quantitative results to the Abstract.
• In the last paragraph of the Introduction, the authors should clearly mention the weakness point of former works (identification of the gaps) and describe the novelties of the current investigation to justify us the paper deserves to be published in this journal.
• Line 83, cite this recent useful paper on successful application of GIS in environmental studies to improve the literature and to show the importance of your work:

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Detection in a North-Eastern Wetland Ecosystem of Bangladesh Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

• Discuss more the Sea Around Us reconstructed catches of mesopelagic fishes for the period 1950-2018 in the global oceans.
• In the Tables, highlight values that are more important and discuss them for better understanding readers.
• It is necessary to explain the sources of error in this study to consider them in next investigations.
• At the end of the manuscript, explain the implications and future works considering the outputs of the current study.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2:

This is to respond to your comments (C) and to provide responses (R). We hope that you will find these responses adequate. We wish to thank you for your comments, which improved our manuscript.

1. C: Add some of the most important quantitative results to the abstract. R: Agreed, our principle result is that relatively small quantities of mesopelagic fishes were reported to be caught from 1950-2018, 2.68 million tonnes, and this is now mentioned in the abstract.
2. C: In the last paragraph of the introduction, the authors should clearly mention the weakness point of former works (identification of the gaps) and describe the novelties of the current investigation to justify us the paper deserves to be published in this journal. R: Agreed, we have added a paragraph at the end of the discussion that addresses the weaknesses of earlier research and the challenges these pose for new research.
3. C: Line 83, cite this recent useful recent paper on successful application of GIS in environmental studies to improve the literature and to show the importance of your work. “Land use and land cover change detection in a northeastern wetland ecosystem of Bangladesh using remote sensing and GIS techniques”. R: GIS as used for Figure 2 is a standard technique that doesn’t need illustration via a citation of other papers, and especially not a land-based application.
4. C: Discuss more the Sea Around Us reconstructed catches of mesopelagic fishes for the period 1950-2018 in the global oceans. R: This entire paper is the reconstruction that we did of mesopelagic fishes.
5. C: In the tables, highlight values that are more important and discuss them for better understanding readers. R: We would have liked to follow on this suggestion if we have been given specifics as to what “tables” and criteria to identify “important values”.
6. C: It is necessary to explain the sources of error in this study to consider them in next investigations. R: Agreed, the last paragraph of the discussion mentions sources of past and potential errors.
7. C: At the end of the manuscript, explain the implications and future works considering the outputs of the current study. R: Agreed, see response above.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have no further comments.