PCLM-D-24-00234

A Collaborative Climate Vulnerability Assessment of California Marine Fishery Species

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Frawley,

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.

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Although the manuscript has some merit, reviewers raised some major concerns. Therefore, authors are required to revise the manuscript and address all the reviewers' comments.

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Please submit your revised manuscript by  December 6, 2024. 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,

Noureddine Benkeblia, Dr. Sci., Dr. Agr.

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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: No

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: This study provides valuable insights about the vulnerability of commercial species in the state of California (USA) in response to climate change in the near and far future. A key strength of this research is its methodology which relies on expert opinion to score species vulnerability. This approach is reproducible to other case studies and can provide guidance for the management of marine resources. The study assesses species’ adaptive capacity to climate change using multiple criteria that evaluate vulnerability, sensitivity, and climate exposure, while accounting for the impact of multiple pressures.

While the study is already well-developed, a few additions could further strengthen it. For instance, the methodology is very interesting. However, it lacks some information on the number of participants in the process, their background, and the time it took to run the scoring workshops. Additionally, the intensity of extreme events seems to be already impacting the system which have been mentioned in the discussion. This kept me wonder why it was not included as one of the climate exposure variables. It might be difficult to access such scenarios but strengthening the discussion on the topic would strengthen the study. I also miss a discussion about other limitations of the methodology (e.g. acclimation capacity of species, stock size, and geographical distribution). Finally, what is the relevance of the marine reserves that are shown in figure 1? It would be interesting to know if they can decrease the vulnerability of species in the future or if they don´t offer a refuge under future conditions.

Here are a few minor comments:

Line 72: what are the associated resources if not species?

Lines 85-86: This seems like a discussion of the methodology.

Lines 128-130: “This variability can mask long-term trends over shorter time periods, effectively delaying the “time of emergence” of anthropogenic influence for some variables [23].” An example would be helpful to understand what this sentence means.

Lines 171-181: too many acronyms, it´s a bit hard to follow.

Line 280: “(near future: 2006-2055 relative to 2006-2055, and far future: 2055-2099 relative to 2006-2055)”, there seems to be a mistake.

Figure 1: what is the difference between green (Federal Marine Reserves), red (State Marine Reserves), and blue (State Marine Conservation Areas) in terms management strategies and their impact? Do they have any relevance to the fishery Management Plan and the Enhanced Status Report?

What is their relevance to the results? These conservation areas might become less relevant under future climate scenarios, but this aspect isn’t currently discussed.

Lines 300-301: would be interesting to know more about the balance in the scoring team: practitioner, scientists, fishers, NGO or stakeholder groups that were used and why these specific groups were used.

Line 359: Where are 7, 10 and 11?

Lines 377-381: was there any software/package/function involved in doing this? Why 10000 times? Was any other number of repetition tested?

Lines 411-416: “To facilitate relative comparison between species, average sensitivity and exposure factor scores for all 27 commercially landed species included in this analysis (i.e., those species listed in Table 1 with commercial landings reported 75% of the years between 2000-2019 ) were scaled between 0 and 1, with qualitative risk categories (i.e., low, medium, & high) assigned using the Euclidean distance of each species from the origin a space defined by exposure and sensitivity indices [42, 43].” This is a bit hard to understand. Why are qualitative risk categories assigned with Euclidean distance? Can you expend a bit on this method?

Figure 7: interesting that precipitation, and salinity have no impact. What might explain this? Why does air temperature have the same level of impact in both the near and distant future?

Lines 675-677: this information should be available in the M&M section.

Line 685-686: this is important to consider as usually coastal ecosystems are more sensitive/vulnerable than off-shore/open sea ecosystems to climate impact and extreme events.

Reviewer #2: please see attached

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6. 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 #1: No

Reviewer #2: 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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: CA_CVA.docx

PCLM-D-24-00234R1

A Collaborative Climate Vulnerability Assessment of California Marine Fishery Species

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Frawley,

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.

==============================

EDITOR:

The manuscript was reviewed and one reviewer raised few comments that should be addressed.

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Please submit your revised manuscript by January 3, 2025. 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,

Noureddine Benkeblia, Dr. Sci., Dr. Agr.

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

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):

The manuscript has been carefully revised and major comments of the reviewers have been addressed. However, few corrections need to be made and few comments have to bee addressed.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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 #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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 #1: The study aimed to assess the climate vulnerability of California state-managed marine species under near and far exposure scenarios to inform adaptive management strategies and conservation efforts. It assesses species’ adaptive capacity to climate change using multiple criteria that evaluate vulnerability, sensitivity, and climate exposure, while accounting for the impact of multiple pressures. The methodology of this manuscript, which relies on expert opinion to score species vulnerability, has gained increasing recognition and application in recent climate adaptation studies in many regions. This approach is reproducible to other case studies and can provide guidance for the management of marine resources.

The authors have made significant revisions in response to the previous reviews, improving the manuscript’s clarity and transparency. The work is well executed, and the writing is generally strong. However, some sentences are quite long (e.g., lines 703–707), which can work at times but might also make the text harder to follow. I suggest reviewing the text to improve readability. Additionally, some supplementary figures (e.g., Figures 5 and 6 in the supplementary information instead of Figure 9 in the main text) seem more relevant or interesting. However, I understand the authors' intent to keep the text concise. Overall, I believe the manuscript is well prepared and makes a meaningful contribution to the field.

Minor Comments:

Line 145: Consider revising the subtitle to “Selection & Profile Preparation of Species”?

Line 150–151: Why were some species selected based on their inclusion in previous CVAs? Was this to ensure comparability with earlier studies or for another reason?

Line 472: "substantially less so following score calibration meetings" does this mean variability was reduced across all species or selectively?

Line 416 “R programming software, this process was repeated 10,000 times…” • it is standard practice to cite the R version and any specific functions or packages used for the analyses.

Discussion: Consider using "fishers" consistently throughout the manuscript instead of alternating between "fishers" and "fishermen" for more inclusive language.

Reviewer #2: Please see my comments attached.

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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 #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: CA_CVA2.docx

A Collaborative Climate Vulnerability Assessment of California Marine Fishery Species

PCLM-D-24-00234R2

Dear Dr. Frawley,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'A Collaborative Climate Vulnerability Assessment of California Marine Fishery Species' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Noureddine Benkeblia, Dr. Sci., Dr. Agr.

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

After careful consideration of the revised manuscript, it is now be considered acceptable for publication under its present form.

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):