Climate Change Potential Impacts on the Tuna Fisheries in the Exclusive Economic Zones of Tonga
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In their manuscript, "Climate change potential impacts on the tuna fisheries in the EEZ of Tonga", the authors estimated the optimal fisheries areas for tuna species (Albacore – Thunnus alalunga, Bigeye – Thunnus obesus, Skipjack – Katsuwonus pelamis, and Yellowfin – Thunnus albacares. in the Exclusive Economic Zone of Tonga.
I believe that this study gives important information regarding the possible expansion of productive areas for these four tuna species in Tonga EEZ. However, in my opinion, changes should be considered before publication to improve the manuscript. The introduction should be improved with the relation between the effects of climate changes on species/fisheries and namely on tuna. I suggest resuming some of the figures (or use the complete figure) from supplementary material and put on the main text, as the authors referred a lot to them in the results. The figures and tables captions must be completed. Thus, this manuscript could not be published yet. Also, attention is need with the use of “;”, “:”, and with the units (for example, should be 10%, and 10 °C), etc. I believe authors can perform a better article and, therefore, resubmit a higher quality version. I hope authors consider my comments and suggestions.
Specific comments:
Abstract
Line 14: should be “:” instead of “;”.
Introduction
The introduction should be improved with more information about the relation between the effects of climate changes on species/fisheries, and on tuna. Also, the connection between some paragraphs is missing, form example between second (lines 36-45) and third (lines 46-58) paragraphs.
Lines 42-44: the scientific name of the species should be in italic style.
Lines 63-70: this information should be in methods section and not in introduction.
Line 72: should be “:” instead of “;”.
Material and Methods
Lines 154: The authors must start the sentence with the complete name: “True Skill Statistic”.
Results
Lines 186-208: the authors must resume some of the figures/table (or use the complete figure/table) from supplementary material and put on the main text, as they described them a lot in the results in these two subsections (3.1 Performances of species distribution modelling, and 3.2 Relative contribution of predictor variables).
Discussion
Lines 295-299: these sentences are a bit confused, please clarify them.
Conclusion
Line 392: usually, in the conclusion sections, it is not common use the reference to figures or tables. Please remove that.
Captions
The captions must be the more completed possible for the reader understand the table or figure without read all the manuscript.
Table 2 and Table 3: please add information about the study area/location.
Figure 2 and Figure 3: please add information about the study area/location.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Tuna species are highly migratory species and widely distributed, also easily affected by the environmental variables, particularly under the background of climate change, the MS analyzed the catch data and environmental variables in Tango waters, described the current and future climatic scenarios of these species fisheries, which will be useful to the fisheries management and fisheries conservation. Some comments are as follows:
1. In the second paragraph of introduction, the scientific name of tunas should be italic.
2. In figure 2, the CPUE of four species was from 2002 to 2018, and just showed the frequency, and the environmental variables was from 2010, how to match the CPUE data and the environmental variables data? And just used the CPUE frequency, actually, ignored annual changes of catch, in addition, the environmental variables also were different by years, so maybe miss the real relationships between catch and environmental variables.
3. About the future projections, the environmental variables from different scenarios was Tango waters? Or just used the general information on global environmental variables?
4. In results, four targeted species habitat distribution and biomass both increased based on the model analysis, the authors can try to give some suggestions on fisheries management under different scenarios; in addition, RCP4.5 the biomass increase of bigeye, yellowfin, skipjack is lower than those in the other scenarios, even lower than that in RCP2.6, what is the main reason of this results?
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Diversity-2442330: Climate change potential impacts on the tuna fisheries in the EEZ of Tonga
The authors did a great effort to improve the manuscript. Congratulations for that. However, some points still need consideration before publication.
Specific comments:
Introduction
Line 78: should be “distribution is crucial for tuna species conservation”.
Material and Methods
Page 5: there is a problem with the figure location.
Conclusion
Line 431: should be “:” instead of “;”.
Captions
Table 1, Table 2, Table 3 and Table 4: please explain in the caption what EEZ means.
Figure 2: please explain in the caption what SSS, SST and SSC mean.
Figure 4: please explain in the caption what EEZ means.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
