PCLM-D-25-00109

Course corrections responding to climate impacts produce divergent effects on population biomass and harvest in fisheries

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Samhouri,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 08 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Cemal Turan, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article. It must therefore be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

**Please only choose the relevant sentences from below**

1. Please clarify all sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants (with grant number) or organizations (with url) that supported your study, including funding received from your institution. 

2. State the initials, alongside each funding source, of each author to receive each grant.

3. State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

4. If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders.

If you did not receive any funding for this study, please simply state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.”

2. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Thanks for your submission on Plos Climate. The MS an important topic in fisheries management under climate change. A Minor Revision decision has been made in accordance with the referee's recommendations. Please review the recommendations carefully.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria ? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In this study, the authors examined the differential effects of course adjustments in response to climate influences on population biomass and harvest in fisheries.

They developed a time-varying overproduction model to investigate the effects of climate-adaptive and fixed management on a harvested resource and further ran a 50-year simulation assuming that productivity decreased or increased linearly without any change in K, carrying capacity decreased or increased linearly without any change in r, and both productivity and carrying capacity decreased or increased linearly. In the case of reduced productivity, the lower harvest rate for small population biomass implied by , under climate-adaptive management resulted in higher population biomass and lower cumulative harvest than under fixed management.

This study concludes that impact assessment decisions regarding course corrections for fisheries management can at least prevent dilemmas.

All things considered, the article is acceptable for publication in its current version.

Reviewer #2: Dear Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to review your manuscript. This is a timely and relevant study with strong methodology and clear writing.

I recommend clarifying the key message that climate-adaptive strategies may not always outperform fixed strategies across all objectives. A brief expansion on model limitations and real-world applications (e.g., groundfish examples) would also enhance the manuscript's impact.

Best regards,

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review Report PCLM-D-25-00109.docx

PCLM-D-25-00109R1

Course corrections responding to climate impacts produce divergent effects on population biomass and harvest in fisheries

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Samhouri,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 05 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Frédéric Cyr

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise. 

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Jameal,

I am the new Academic Editor handling your manuscript. Thank you for your re-submission and for your understanding regarding the potential use of AI tool during the first round of review. I was able to secure a third Reviewer and I have now received their assessment of your manuscript. They recommended a minor revision. I also read your work and I think that your manuscript will be suitable for publication after your address the comments made by Reviewer3. I will not invite more reviewers.

Thanks again, and I look forward for your revision.

Frédéric

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria ? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #3: General comments to authors:

This paper sought to examine implications of using a fixed vs. a climate adaptive management strategy for fish stocks with changing productivity. The authors accomplished this by creating simulations using a time-varying surplus production model. Overall, I found this paper well-written, interesting, and of value to fisheries science and potentially other fields that may need to modify management strategies in response to climate change. Although the conclusion, that whether we should use climate adaptive management strategies depends on the context and management goals, is perhaps not surprising, it is certainly of value as there have been increasing calls to use dynamic reference points. I have a few relatively minor comments below related to clarifying some of the assumptions and statements that are made but otherwise feel this paper will make a valuable contribution.

Specific comments:

Line 83 and elsewhere: There are cases where references appear as numbers and others where they appear as in text citations. Although this would likely be caught by a copyeditor this should be fixed.

Lines 122-124: I understand the point of the text here but would also argue that demographic parameters are likely not ever stable for extended periods of time. I would suggest removing the second half of this sentence. However, this is not an overly important argument for the purpose of this paper.

Lines 196-213: This is helpful!

Lines 249-257: Does this represent how reference points are commonly calculated in the US? It is my understanding that common practice involves updating reference points every X number of years, where K and r would represent the most recent stock assessment estimates (I believe this is why you applied Eqn 4 in annual, 4 year, and decadal intervals). I recognize that you are not using operating and observation models, however, being clear about how your simulation reflects operational practice is important. I would suggest either modifying how these values are defined (e.g., K1 and r1 could instead be calculated as an average of K or r to represent a proxy of what a model would estimate across a time-series where these values had continuously changed) or clarifying why your assumption is useful despite differing from what is done in practice (e.g., the salmon description that is included in the discussion).

Lines 262-267: We are also often interested in interannual harvest variance since large shifts in annual TAC can have operational and economic consequences for a fishery. For example, if the climate adaptive strategy produces lower cumulative harvest but interannual harvest rates are more stable, that would be a more acceptable scenario than if cumulative harvest is lower and interannual harvest is more variable. Is there a reason this was not considered here? I could believe that this value may not change dramatically in deterministic simulations, but this would be useful to think about and explore if there is variation.

Line 264: Why use 16-year bins? Choosing 10-year bins would be more straightforward across a 50-year simulation and would presumably still reflect the gradual changes. This is likely not overly important and was maybe was just chosen to graphically display changes in 3 bins, however, it stuck out as a strange number to use for binning.

Lines 285-287: To be clear, are the main simulation analyses here deterministic? It seems so given the lack of observation or implementation error and the lack of stochasticity. I think this should be explicitly stated early on in the Methods. Additionally, for the lines highlighted here, it should be clarified that the stochastic growth analysis was a supplemental analysis. There should also be text added to S1 Text that describes the number of simulations that were run when stochasticity was added.

Lines 288-310: It is not fully clear what the purpose of this analysis is. From reading on, it seems that the idea is to see if real stocks have shown changes in their estimated unfished spawning biomass, which would then highlight how your simulations are relevant. I personally don’t know if this analysis is fully necessary here, since there is a lot of evidence in published literature that climate change can influence productivity and that shifts in productivity will have implications for reference points. Regardless, I would recommend more explicitly stating why you are conducting this analysis. Please note a later comment about retrospective patterns when addressing this comment since changes to estimates of unfished biomass in successive assessments may not necessarily relate to climate induced changes in productivity.

Line 317-321: Could you remind readers what the fishery and conservation objectives are here? I defaulted to thinking that fishery objectives would be related to cumulative harvest, etc. and had to scroll up to the methods to find this detail. You could do this in parentheticals, “…met fishery objectives (i.e., avoided overfishing and an overfished population)…”.

Lines 434-436: Can we interpret these estimates as declines in unfished biomass though? These changes over time represent retrospective patterns which could arise for a variety of reasons including inaccurate data or incorrect model assumptions (e.g., Cadrin 2025). I understand that you are trying to make a point that these declines could represent an incorrect model assumption about time-varying K, and if that is the case then your simulations would be directly applicable. However, this journal is not targeted towards fishery scientists and I think there should be some clarification here that these types of trends could represent a lot of different processes and do not inherently mean that K is declining for these stocks.

Lines 558-561: It is a good point that current methods for estimating reference points will implicitly match some of the trends observed in your simulation, however, it may be important to make it clear that current practice does not always involve estimating time-varying parameters as your simulation does. This is important to clarify what is done in practice. This may also be an important distinction for future research because time-varying parameters could lead to a much noisier time-series of estimated r and K which could yield larger interannual variability in reference points and management decisions.

References

Cadrin, S. X. (2025). Misinterpreting retrospective patterns in fishery stock assessment. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 82(2), fsaf014.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy .

Reviewer #3: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Course corrections responding to climate impacts produce divergent effects on population biomass and harvest in fisheries

PCLM-D-25-00109R2

Dear Dr. Samhouri,

We're pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you'll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you'll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact climate@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Frédéric Cyr

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I am fine with the section “Application to groundfish along the U.S. West Coast” where it is now.

Reviewers' comments: