PONE-D-19-29177

Dredging activity and associated sound have negligible effects on adult Atlantic sturgeon migration to spawning habitat in a large coastal river

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: Overall this is a very well written manuscript and the authors are commended for their efforts.

The study sample size is extremely limited regarding females. Suggesting dredging does not have an impact on adult ATS migration is a rather sweeping claim and a bit presumptuous given the study’s samples and geographic size of the study area. I strongly encourage the authors limit this study to male subjects or address the limited number of females in the study within the discussion.

In figure 1, it is unclear what the colors along the dredge lines indicate (“the colored dots within the channel are where the hydraulic-cutterhead dredge was working during the study period”). Do warmer colors signify the amount of time a dredge working in an area or the time of year the dredge was working? Please clarify.

To this point, why did the authors set up the VPS at the downstream site over the upstream site? Please incorporate the reasoning into the manuscript.

The authors report the number of fish in the study area used in the hot spot analysis but was there a minimum number of positions per fish required? Did these positions need to be captured within a certain window of time, similar to the swimming speed requirements? Incorporating a fish's positions in July versus September might be very different. Was a seasonal component or individual effect included? The authors elude to the differences in behaviors across seasons so this should be accounted for in the analyses.

Figure 7 is very interesting and I believe the authors should expand text in the discussion around this figure. Its very interesting that in plot C the fish are in a very narrow cluster along the channel (presumed preferred habitat) but in plots A and B the cluster is much broader and fish are avoiding banks. To me, this suggests dredging does influence migratory behavior. From your analyses it does not appear to impact the upstream or downstream movement or meandering in the lower dredging area but there appears to be an impact that should be discussed.

Remove or expand figure 8. Either include all fish's paths or none.

In general, the manuscript's discussion could be expanded and incorporate related studies.

Reviewer #2: The study assesses the effects of dredging on migration of sturgeon for purportedly spawning purposes. It is laudable in the sense that the study uses existing fish with transmitters and essentially, employs an array of Vemco receivers. However, my main two concerns are the writing styles and the interpretations or inferences from their study.

I found this manuscript to be very difficult to read and follow given the number of inverted, double negative and redundant sentences. I have made annotations on a pdf of your manuscript to highlight some problem areas and suggested some potential edits. I think you would be able to relay your message much more effectively if you conducted a very hard edit on your manuscript.

Your study was about the affects of dredging on migrating sturgeon, I recommend you adhere to that in your conclusions. You cannot make any statement about spawning success or efficacy of policy on recruitment because you didn't test it in your study. I have provided comments about the structure of your manuscript. For example, your conclusion is not a conclusion. You shouldn't be presenting new material in the conclusion. I think your abstract captures your study nicely, your conclusion doesn't.

Minor comments

Can you conduct statistical analyses to support your observations on initiation of movement (e.g., logistic regression or GLM using temperature and upstream movement)? It could strengthen your study.

This study was conducted predominately on males. I understand that you are relying on previously transmittered fish and therefore have to rely on movement, but could you address potential limitations in your discussion (e.g., sex or size effect). Additionally, could you provide metrics of the fish in the study with the caveat that they were of that size upon sample.

Several figures are, in my opinion, not necessary (e.g., Figures 2 and 4); Figure 6 would be better if it was a histogram.

Do not start sentences with acronyms.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Submitted filename: PONE-D-19-29177_reviewer.pdf

Dredging activity and associated sound have negligible effects on adult Atlantic sturgeon migration to spawning habitat in a large coastal river

PONE-D-19-29177R1

Dear Dr. Balazik,

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

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Zuogang Peng, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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 #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: N/A

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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 #2: Yes

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

PLOS ONE 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 #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 #2: The authors did an excellent job addressing most of my concerns and edits. Personally, I think the paper is stronger. I still feel the manuscript is qualitative vs quantitative and some of their conclusions could be strengthened by statistical analyses.

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Reviewer #2: Yes: Tim Haxton