Abundance and Distribution of Cigarette Butts on Coastal Environments: Examples from Southern Spain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I enjoyed reading your manuscript, which addresses a current and important issue at many beaches.

Please find my detailed comments in the attached report, most of which are minor.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

thank you so much for your work and efforts, we tried to answer to all your questions.

See attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled: “Cigarette butts abundance and distribution on coastal environments: examples from Southern Spain” is an interesting and well-written text dealing with an unresolved environmental problem. Nevertheless, I feel that the manuscript suffers from several methodological inefficiencies. According to data in Table 1 and Figure 1 (map) this is an attempt to compare results from various surveys carried out in three different areas along the south Spanish coasts. First of all, these areas differ significantly from each other as they are subjected, at least, to different hydrodynamic regimes. Only this fact, makes comparisons very difficult. But this is not the major methodological problem. The authors have used data derived from various seasons but these sampling periods (with only one exception) are not comparable as they do not coincide even in pairs. So, to my opinion, it is not possible to compare results of CB assessments coming e.g. from summer (Alacant) with others from winter/spring ones (Ceuta) and finally from autumn (Cadiz). Conditions are just too different to allow this. To give another example, from Fig. 1a it is obvious that beaches in Alacant (August 2018) and Cadiz (October 2018) suffer indeed by accumulation of CBs during the summer period. But this does not show anything about prevailing conditions in Ceuta within the same period simply because there are not such data to compare with. This methodological weakness follows also the other parts of the results e.g selected beaches with increased number of CB in Table 2. Finally, it inevitably leads to the generalities mentioned in the limited text for conclusions that can be applied to almost all Mediterranean beaches and not to the specific southern Spanish coastal areas as the title of the manuscript suggests. The authors are recommended to present results from each study area separately in an attempt to describe and focus on the local environmental and social conditions and to avoid ambiguities in processing such a rich data set.

Another issue that needs consideration is that in the introductory part the authors deal only with hazards related to toxicity of CBs and they do not refer at all to health risks related to their direct consumption by young children, pets and wildlife.

Author Response

dear Reviewer

thank you so much for your work and efforts, we tried to answer to all your questions.

See attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have corresponded in a satisfactory degree to the reviewer's comments making all necessary text corrections /additions, while new Tables and literature have also been added and used in the text. The paper touches on a very important and worldwide distributed environmental problem. It is well known that many Mediterranean beaches still “suffer” from this kind of anthropogenic disturbance. Consequently, it is expected that it will motivate the development of more appropriate and intense management actions against cigarette butt pollution. I believe the revised manuscript is now worth publishing in Mar.Sc.Eng. Journal.