PCLM-D-23-00230

A rapid approach to assessing the vulnerability of Mozambican fisheries’ species to climate change

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. FENNESSY,

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.

Both reviewers agree that the results presented in the manuscript are novel and interesting. However, some improvements to the text are needed, particularly in the discussion and conclusions sections. Reviewer 2 also suggests to add figures or tables showing the frequency of the main traits by zone and/or fishing gear.

We would also like to remind you that all data underlying the findings reported in the manuscript will need to be made fully available online in a public repository, such as Figshare or Dryad, before the manuscript is published.

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 17 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 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.

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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,

Jan Klecka

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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1. In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding the permits you obtained for the work. Please ensure you have included the full name of the authority that approved the field site access and, if no permits were required, a brief statement explaining why.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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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: No

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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: The authors present a rapid, semi-quantitative trait based vulnerability assessment of Mozambican fishery species to climate change. I believe that given the challenges experienced with data paucity in Mozambique this rapid approach provides good baseline data which can be used for adaptation and mitigation planning. The authors focus on only one driver of climate change (SST) because of uncertainty around the other drivers. While this is a valid approach I think that it needs to be highlighted early in the manuscript (in the introduction rather than the methods) that the focus is on temperature and not on other climate change drivers. Additionally, I have made minor suggestions, mainly around writing and citation style:

Page 2 (line 46): Insert the word a after climate change poses in the sentence: “Along with a host of other impacts, climate change poses a threat..”

Page 2 (line 48&49): Mafuca et al. under publication should be in press or submitted? Please check and change how you cite papers like this throughout the manuscript.

Page 3 (line 50): Check citation style Blasiak et al., (2017) should be Blasiak et al. (2017) no comma. Again check and standardise throughout.

Page 3 (lines 51-53): Which countries were assessed all globally or only those in Africa?

Page 3 (lines 56-57). Please correct citation style: Cardinale et al., 2014; Mutombene et al. 2019, Mafuca et al, this issue.

Page 3 (lines 63-64): “have identified villages where coastal community are highly vulnerable to climate change-induced food insecurity” should be coastal communities.

Page 5: Reference Figure 1 on first mention of the different zones.

Page 6 (line 133): Change text to “a range of attributes were identified”

Page 10, Table 2: In the limited data and expert judgement cells sentences are missing text, with sentences ending mid-sentence.

Page 11 (line 237): Insert comma after Hare et al. (2016)

Page 11: Define what GIS package was used.

Page 16 (lines 342-346): This is a very long sentence which doesn’t really make sense from “when multi-species…”

Page 17 (line 375): Please check citation style I don’t think this should be (STF unpublished)

Page 18: In the text on sensitivity of estuarine-dependent species consider clarifying that juveniles of estuarine-dependent species are often highly tolerant of extreme temperatures in estuaries (during their estuarine-dependent life-stage) you can cite Gillanders et al. (2022):

Gillanders, B.M., McMillan, M.N., Reis-Santos, P., Baumgartner, L.J., Brown, L.R., Frederick, J.C., Feyrer, V., Henriques, S., James, N.C., Jaureguizar, A.J., Pessanha, A.L.M., Vasconcelos, R.P., Vu, A.V., Walther, B. & Wibowo, A. Climate Change and Fishes in Estuaries. (2022). In: Fish and Fisheries in Estuaries: A Global Perspective. Whitfield A.K., Able, K.W., Blaber, S.J.M. & Elliot M. (Eds), John Wiley & Sons, pp. 380-457.

Page 20 (line 462) Consider referring to Whitfield et al. (2016). Extension of Scylla serrata into temperate estuaries is considered an indicator of climate change.

Whitfield, A.K., James, N.C., Lamberth, S.J., Adams, J.B., Perissinotto, R., Rajkaran, A. and Bornman, T.G. (2016). The role of pioneers as indicators of biogeoraphic range expansion caused by global change in southern African coastal waters. Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science 172: 138-153.

Page 21. Most of this page is one very long paragraph which can be split into two paragraphs.

Reviewer #2: The objective of the study, titled "A rapid approach to assessing the vulnerability of Mozambican fisheries species to climate change," was to apply rapid assessment methods to evaluate the sensitivity, exposure, and vulnerability of fisheries species to climate change, especially in data-deficient areas. The study's main results are highly significant, providing new information and approaches to understanding the potential effects of climate change on exploited fisheries resources in data-poor countries. The authors also discuss the main challenges of the research, offering insights into future directions for studies in this field. Generally, the text is easy to follow, the figures are informative and aid in comprehending the main results and conclusions, and the Material and Methods section is well-described. However, the discussion and conclusion sections require improvements. My main concerns are outlined below:

I suggest focusing on the main objective(s) of the study by writing a paragraph with the objective(s) of the study at the end of the Introduction. For instance, the objective "identify key species from artisanal and industrial fisheries" is already in the Material and Methods (Line 125). It’s already implicit for the reader that the authors used the main important fisheries resources to conduct the research.

Due to a scarcity of information on the species, I suggest adding figures or tables showing the frequency of the main traits by zone and/or fishing gear. For instance, a bar plot showing the frequency of the species by the trait fecundity (e.g., fecundity > 20,000 eggs, 100-20,000 eggs, and < 100 eggs per year) considering the fishing and zone. This type of plot may be inserted as a supplementary figure, and it would help to visualize the species related to low, medium, and high sensitivity. In addition, this will summarize the information of the documents containing the individual attribute sensitive scores (200 pages) (L. 272-273).

I suggest the authors to provide the list of references by species for which the biological traits were taken. For instance, there are citations in the S1 Appendix, but their respective references are missing.

There are sections in the Discussion that are more appropriate for the Material and Methods section. For example, the lines from 395 to 406, where the authors justify the reduction of the number of species by eliminating closely related ones. I also recommend shortening the discussion and focusing more on the methods, species, and metrics (sensitivity, exposure, and vulnerability).

There are many affirmations in Discussion that need references. For instance: L. 356-358 -“Exposure measures the predicted environmental change that the species is expected to encounter within its distribution, reflecting the overlap between species distribution and the magnitude and spatial distribution of the environmental change“; L. 374-375: “This in-person participatory method is more successful than eliciting remote inputs from fisheries specialists in the WIO region (STF, unpublished).” L.384-385: “Ocean acidification was also considered, but there are inadequate data and impacts of changes in this factor are equivocal.”

There are an excessive amount of unpublished and under publication studies (e.g., L.49, L.53, L.55, L. 63, L.82, L.419, and L.451). I highly recommend that the authors replace these references by published references.

The conclusion and recommendation section appears to be more entwined with the discussion rather than serving as a distinct conclusion. In my opinion, the primary conclusions of the study are not clearly presented. I recommend that the authors revise this section to concentrate on the principal findings of the study. Additionally, consider incorporating a paragraph discussing the implications of these findings for fishery management, along with any recommendations or suggestions for future research directions.

Minor comments:

L. S1 Supplementary Information: Fecundity can refer to both oocytes and eggs. For instance, in Table 4, the fecundity of Actinopterygii species is commonly given by the number of the most developed oocyte in the ovary, whereas for species such as Panulirus spp. and Portunidade, fecundity is estimated based on the number of eggs (fecundated oocytes) carried by the female. This has implications for sensitivity assessment, as species with external egg fecundity tend to experience higher mortality in their early life stages compared to those with some parental care.

Figure 2: It´s almost impossible to visualize the different depths in Figure 2. I suggest using isolines with different colors or line types.

Figure 2 legend: Exposure scores, as well as the fisheries management zones, are already displayed in the Figure.

L.401-402: In my opinion, it would be important to provide the list of all 70 priority fisheries species in order to the readers can detect species with similar distribution and sensitivity.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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A rapid approach to assessing the vulnerability of Mozambican fisheries’ species to climate change

PCLM-D-23-00230R1

Dear Dr FENNESSY,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'A rapid approach to assessing the vulnerability of Mozambican fisheries’ species to climate change' 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.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

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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,

Jan Klecka

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

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

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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

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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 #1: 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: I am happy that my earlier comments have been addressed.

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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

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