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Thank you for making those final revisions to the manuscript. I am satisfied with your revisions, and happy to now move your manuscript forward into production.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Patricia Gandini, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
I have now heard back from the more critical referee who is supportive of the work being published. However, they also point out a number of minor issues or typos with the revision that I expect you will want to correct prior to publication, so I am returning the manuscript to you for a final round of minor revisions to allow you to make the changes you want to the manuscript before moving it forward into production. I do not expect to send it out for additional review, and I look forward to seeing the final version of your revised manuscript.
The authors have greatly improved the clarity of their research.
The experimental design is excellent. The authors have greatly improved the communication of their experimental design.
No Comment
The authors did an excellent job of incorporating the comments from the first review. This is an excellent study, which is a strong contribution to our understanding of earlier sea turtle populations and the history of fisheries in Mexico. I have a few minor suggestions below. There are some minor formatting errors once the track changes are incorporated, so be sure to address those in the final draft. Apologies, but the line numbers are wrong for comments 1-9. I was using the word version, which is different from the PDF.
1. Line 1: Perhaps change “past” to “historical.” That is the more commonly used research term (e.g. historical ecology”) and might be better for search engines, etc.
2. You might cite line 34, “building on previous work” to reference some of the work you are building on.
3. Line 39: remove “only” and “already”
4. I’d loose the last line of the abstract. The previous one is more powerful. Or can you change the focus of the sentence? Surely, the fact that other people can do research is not the biggest implication of your findings. You should end with that point (the biggest implication). Or flip the order of the last two sentences.
5. Line 69 – formatting typo (line break)
6. Line 96 - formatting typo (extra line break)
7. Line 251-253 – bring the citations together, currently separated by reference to supplemental materials
8. Line 281 move “(∼12 hours)” to after “fishing”
9. Line 284 – Zar or Zurr – just checking
10. Line 294 – long sentence. Could break after “consensus. We used all ….” There is also a word missing in the middle of the sentence. Check for clarity.
11. Line 308 “quantified data” of what? Say that explicitly.
12. Line 309: fix “We chose oral content was chosen”
13. Line 339: replace “>63,” with “> 63:” And use the formatting for the numbers listed below too). Its better to not start sentences with numbers too
14. Add a colon after “Topics included”
15. Line 359: fix sentence “We used footnotes were to”
16. Line 509 and 513: Great approaches to standardizing results
17. Line 569: Reed 2008 (Biol Consv) Stakeholder participation for environmental management: A literature review provides a good review of this too
18. The tables are very clear.
19. The figures are great and support your descriptions of the processes
20. Figure 6: remove extra space before “Collapse” in the legend
I now have reports back from 2 expert referees who both agree that your work has value to the field, but that it requires some revision before it would become acceptable for publication. In general, the comments should be relatively simple to deal with, but the reason for a major revision is that the analyses currently do not incorporate temporal auto-correlation. Although explicit consideration of temporal auto-correlation may not change the results, the referee points out that this is standard in the field and the reader needs to know whether that is the case. Given additional analyses are needed, this becomes a major revision that will be reconsidered by the referees upon resubmission. I look forward to seeing your revised manuscript that addresses the referee feedback provided here.
Overall well written. Could be streamlined. Figures and tables are clear. Specific suggestions in attached file.
Excellent experimental design for field work.
Analyses currently do not incorporate temporal auto-correlation, which they should. There is a good explanation of how to do this in Zuur 2009 (https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387874579)
Its not always clear which sample was used when and how sampling data from different sources was incorporated into analyses.
More comments in attachment.
Conclusions are well stated. There are additional topics which could be included in the discussion and the discussion could link more strongly to the results. See specific comments in attached file.
see attached file
Pass. The writing is generally clear throughout the paper. Specific suggestions for reorganization of some information is suggested in comments and edits throughout the text to improve clarity and flow. Places where additional context and specific information would be helpful have been noted. Specific suggestions for text edits have also been included in the attached pdf. Suggestion to re-write the abstract in one concise paragraph which also highlights the significance of the work more clearly. As the authors are revising, suggestion for them to reduce redundancy wherever possible and really emphasize key points and significance of the research in strong topic sentences with good supporting points. Remove any unnecessary repetition of the same idea in different ways. Some of the appendices have minor editorial errors so should be checked for these before final publication.
Pass. Overall the paper is clear. Specific suggestions have been made in the paper to improve clarity in some sections. Part of the challenge is the iterative process of the method, such that some results are used to inform the methods following, therefore, there is some mixing of results within the methods, but for understandable reasons. In the revision, the authors should try to separate their methods and results as much as possible to be more clear. Figures 1 to 3 should specifically link more closely with the Phases of the methodology, and reference (i.e., names or titles or phases) to the phases should be used consistently in the manuscript. Places where more detail in methods or results would be helpful are included in the comments in the pdf.
Pass. Conclusions are generally well-stated and reasonable based on the information provided and analyses conducted. Raw databases have not been included presumably due to confidentiality of the data (following ethics guidelines). Specific suggestions are made in the article to re-organize parts of the discussion to highlight important contributions and to be more clear in some sections. Suggestions have been made to move some content from results to discussion where the items actually belong because they are more speculation than direct results.
Overall, an important contribution for conservation science because a longer time-scale than that of contemporary scientific surveys is often required for more complete understanding of how social-ecological systems have changed over time, and how that affects assessment of species conservation status and ecosystem interactions. Some of the knowledge required to extend our time series of understanding is embedded in the communities that have been part of specific places over time. Knowledge of the people who use the resources in that place is an important and often unappreciated source of information for understanding long-term change. This paper presents an important approach and tools that could help bridge the gap between scientific surveys and local ecological knowledge, including indigenous knowledge.
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