Dear Dr. Ketchum,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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.

The MS of Ketchum et al. provides essential data on a sharks movement, in a very sensitive and important marine ecosystem. The information regarding migratory behaviour of the Galapagos sharks and the silky sharks between the islands that comprise the Revillagigedo Archipelago are essential to improve their conservation and for the management of the MPA of the Galapagos arcipelago, highlighting the necessity of an International cooperation.

Despite the relevance of the provided data, the MS necessites a major revision to resolve several issues related to the clarity of the provided information, the high degree of self-referencing, the absence of caption and the grammar refuses. I strongly suggest authors improve the MS quality according to reviers suggestions.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 06 2024 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 plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
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If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Claudio D'Iglio, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal requirements:

1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

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2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

[The authors (MH and JK) would like to thank the International Community Foundation, Ocearch, Chris Fischer Productions and National Geographic for providing the initial funding to tag many sharks and set up the acoustic receiver array in the Revillagigedo Archipelago. We are gratefiul to Club Cantamar, Fins Attached (Alex Antoniou),  Sharks Mission France and Quino El Guardian for supporting our expeditions to the islands. We also thank the Alliances WWF-Telmex-Telcel and WWF-Fundación Carlos Slim and Ocean Blue Tree for additional support for this project].

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

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed.

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript:

[The authors would like to thank the International Community Foundation, Ocearch, Chris Fischer Productions and National Geographic for providing the initial funding to tag many sharks and set up the acoustic receiver array in the Revillagigedo Archipelago. We are gratefiul to Club Cantamar, Fins Attached (Alex Antoniou),  Sharks Mission France and Quino El Guardian for supporting our expeditions to the islands. We also thank the Alliances WWF-Telmex-Telcel and WWF-Fundación Carlos Slim and Ocean Blue Tree for additional support for this project, as well as the Secretariat for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation of the Ecuadorean Government; Iris and Michael Smith; and the Directorate of the Galapagos National Park. FGM thanks Instituto Politécnico Nacional (COFAA, EDI) for fellowships. We are also grateful to Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales and Dirección del Parque Nacional Revillagigedo for providing necessary permits to conduct research at the Revillagigedo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The monitoring of shark populations in Clipperton atoll is developed under an undergoing scientific cooperation agreement between France and Mexico.

Dedicated to Blanca Isabel Lara Vazquez.]

We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

[The authors (MH and JK) would like to thank the International Community Foundation, Ocearch, Chris Fischer Productions and National Geographic for providing the initial funding to tag many sharks and set up the acoustic receiver array in the Revillagigedo Archipelago. We are gratefiul to Club Cantamar, Fins Attached (Alex Antoniou),  Sharks Mission France and Quino El Guardian for supporting our expeditions to the islands. We also thank the Alliances WWF-Telmex-Telcel and WWF-Fundación Carlos Slim and Ocean Blue Tree for additional support for this project].

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: No

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: Major comments

This manuscript investigated the degree of movement between islands in Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) of eastern tropical Pacific using long period (2010-2018) of ultrasonic telemetry dataset for 82 individuals of two pelagic sharks (Galapagos sharks and Silky sharks). I think that the understanding of the horizontal movement of pelagic sharks is important to determine appropriately the size, number and place of the MPAs. The authors attempted to summarize the movement patterns of type 1, 2, and 3 using the network analysis. Probably, I think that the figs.5 and 6 indicate the main results of your study. I understood that the network among research points was well constructed for each species surrounding the MPAs, but it is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the MPAs from your analysis because the ultrasonic telemetry can only detect the movement around the location of the receptors which are placed only near the islands, however, both species are highly migratory species, so that it is uncertain whether it is enough to protect the shark species using the MPAs based on the results of this study.

For introduction, I think the authors should mention the reasons, the pelagic sharks stay in the similar sites or move to the different islands, from the perspective of the biology and ecology using the information about the past studies, otherwise it is unclear the effectiveness of the setting of the MPA in this region.

Overall, the quality of the figures is low, and the resolution of figures is low as well. Therefore, it is difficult to understand (e.g., Figs1-3,7). Furthermore, there is no figure captions for all figures.

Minor comments

L70-71: I don’t think that the MPAs is always more effective management strategies for migratory species than any other management measures such as TAC and TAE. Please mention the reason.

L85: Add “Figure 1” to the end of sentence.

For figure1: Please insert the latitude and longitude for the maps.

L98-109: What is the main reason to conduct the inter-island movement in the ETP for scalloped hammerhead sharks? Please clarify.

L112-114: Do you want to mention about the sharks or general marine species? Please clarify.

L120: What is the difference between “the eastern Pacific” and “ETP”?

L123: ecology -> behavioral ecology

L124-125: What is the network analysis? Is the movement frequency enough to identify the important movement paths?

L150-151: This sentence means that this species is a coastal shark, not pelagic shark.

L156-158: Add “Figure 1” to the end of sentence.

L162-163: There is no CP in the Figure 1.

L187: Why you didn’t do in the CA.

L215-216: Add “Figure 2” to the end of sentence.

L239: network analysis -> NA

L251: What is the y axis in Fig.2 and I cannot identify each location from this figure.

L253-281: To show the horizontal movement of each shark, the author should make the map including the pathway of each shark for the period tagged.

L283-295: It is difficult to understand the description of this paragraph from the Figs 5 and 6.

L310-314: The authors should show the table on the values of eigenvalue.

L319: Which months are the wet months?

L321-322: The author should examine the effect of SST on the horizontal movement of both species.

L329-331: either of daytime -> night time

L345-350: I agreed that author should examine the site-fidelity of each species by different sex and life stages.

L371-372: The authors discussed the characteristics of this individuals from the sex and life stages based on the total length.

L394-397: I think this is the shortcoming of this tools.

L435: I cannot see the figure well.

L449: MPAS -> MPAs

L457-462: The author should discuss the stock status based on the indicator analysis of silky sharks and the annual catches conducted by IATTC.

L468-470: Scientifically, the methodology used in this analysis cannot draw this conclusion. The author should use the environmental data in relation to the data of movements.

L472-276: It is true that this study showed that both species had a long-distance movement, but the authors didn’t show scientifically the clear reason for protecting the species using the MPA because there is no information about, what the size of the MPA (How many numbers of MPA; What connectivity etc.) is useful to protect for these species.

Reviewer #2: Review of “Shark movements between islands in the Revillagigedo Archipelago and the connectivity to other islands in the Eastern Tropical Pacific”

The paper has potentially important information on the movement and connectivity of widely spaced protected areas, which would have relevance for the difficult issue of how to protect long-ranging endangered animals visiting areas in between that are not protected. There seems to have been a large number of two species of sharks tagged, which should give a good overview of use of the areas. There were some problems with understanding the information in the manuscript. This began with the lack of captions for the figures and the apparent mis-labelling of the tables, making understanding the manuscript – not the authors’ fault. The figure captions was resolved by the journal, but it lead to further confusion with two versions of Figure 2 (below). As a result, the interpretation of the data became difficult to understand, not allowing any further review as the Discussion would not then make sense. I hope that the comments will help to make the paper stronger and one that can be used as a good reference.

Specific comments:

There seems to be a high degree of self-referencing (36%), which then does not allow the authors to support their arguments with a wider range of studies. The manuscript would be greatly enhanced and made stronger by discussing their work in a broader context of similar and relevant studies by their peers.

The grammar in the Material and Methods section should be to be reviewed for clarity in understanding the text. Captions are generally meant to allow the reader to understand a table and figure without having to read the manuscript. The captions in this manuscript could use move information in them.

Line 162 discussed Cabo Pulmo Natiional Park at length, but it is not mentioned in the five MPAs (Line 179) – is it meant to be a part of the study (Line 179-181)?

Line 188: Is Table S1 available or is this Table 1?

Line 195 notes that maturity was reported for the sharks. This is not mentioned again in the manuscript, which would be very interesting in terms of areas each stage used and travel profile. The data on maturity is in Table S1 – but this does not seem to be available to read.

Results

Line 250 notes that there are 37 silky and 50 Galapagos sharks, but Table 1 records 39 silky and 53 Galapagos sharks.

Figure 2: as mentioned above, there were two different Figure 2s (cannot attach them), making interpretation of the data difficult. The Individual number on the figure and the number in the text do not seem to match on either figure. For example: Silky shark #14 tagged during 2013 (2014) at San Benedicto was not detected at Roca Partida or Socorro and not returning to San Benedicto, #15 was though. Silky #17 tagged at San Benedicto seemed to move to Socorro rather than Roca Partida.

Without being clear on which figure is correct, it is difficult to understand the mismatch with the text in the Results – Movements section, or to go any further with the review until this is resolved.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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Dear Dr.  Ketchum,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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.

The Manusctipt has been strongly improved and need only some minor adjustments regarding the grammarly. Moreover, it was detected an high occurrence of self citations, so I strongly suggest you to reduce the self citations occurring in the text.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 28 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 plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic 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'.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols . Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols .

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Claudio D'Iglio, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

**********

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

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

Reviewer #2: The additions and changes have made the manuscript stronger and more understandable. There a a very few corrections in grammar needed in these new passages.

**********

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Reviewer #2: No

**********

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Dear Dr. Ketchum,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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.

The MS has been storngly improved but authors should strongly reduce the self citations (they are more than the 31 %) before that it can be suitable for the publication.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 12 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 plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic 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'.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols . Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols .

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Claudio D'Iglio, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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.

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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.

Shark movements between islands in the Revillagigedo Archipelago and connectivity to other islands in the Eastern Tropical Pacific

PONE-D-24-20949R3

Dear Dr. Ketchum,

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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Kind regards,

Claudio D'Iglio, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: