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Thank you for taking the time to go over your work once more. The new version is now acceptable, and I am happy to move this into production.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Robert Toonen, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
[# PeerJ Staff Note: Although the Academic and Section Editors are happy to accept your article as being scientifically sound, a final check of the manuscript shows that it would benefit from further English editing. Therefore, if you can identify further edits, please work with our production group to address them while in proof stage #]
I have gone over your manuscript, as has one reviewer. From a scientific point of view, your work is now ready for publication. I would like you to go over the English one final time as suggested by the reviewer; there are small edits needed throughout, and a few more than could be safely handled during the proof stage. Thank you for your patience, and I look forward to seeing a revised version very soon.
The paper now has been sufficiently revised based on the comments of the referees. This is a review paper based on a mentoring plan in WCMB to review the Aichi targets. The authors chose 4 Aichi targets and reviewed them. The authors finally identified the key priorities that must be addressed for better ocean management.
no comment
no comment
Please go through the paper one more time and try to revise the English and also the grammar. I started doing this just as an example for the first paragraph. there are many sentences that are not grammatically correct. The authors are not consistent in using the connecting words. For example, one time there is a comma before 'however' and one time a semicolon.
I have heard from three expert reviewers, whose final evaluations range from "minor revisions" to "reject". However, when examining their comments in detail, there are many common points. In particular, both reviewers 1 and 2 note that there is a lack of novelty in your conclusions - and suggest some ways to address this. Along with papers suggested by reviewer 2, the authors may find it worthwhile to look at other papers from the WCMB already published in PeerJ to ensure their work does not overlap with recently published works.
In summary, the responses to the comments will require a large amount of rewriting and some consideration and discussion amongst the authors, and hence my decision is that major revisions are needed.
The paper reads well with ample references.
There are no figures and two tables. One table restates the well known Aichi Targets. The second lists some well-known impacts on major marine habitats/biomes.
The methods appear to be a literature review by authors who attended a conference workshop.
The length of the references is nearly double that of the main text.
The study is a broad sweep of threats to marine biota and biological habitats. This reiterates the well-known threats which led to the Aichi Targets.
The review is not particularly critical and shows no novel insights. For example, (1) several studies have criticised the use of % MPA coverage as a statistic of ocean protection and the high values are accepted uncritically here - these grossly exaggerate protection because most MPA do not even aim to fully protect biodiversity Lines 162-4). To say that MCI 2008 'argue' that the true figure is less is misleading. They simply use the % that aims to be fully protected (within which enforcement may vary).
(2) The section on connectivity perpetuates old arguments from its fans which overlook the real nature of marine connectivity, stepping stone effects and that it is implicitly included in conservation designs that are representative (see recent reviews in TREE).
(3) line 245 cites a website for "50% of the worlds coral reefs have died" which is clearly untrue. Most reefs are already comprised of dead coral, and mortality caries greatly between species due to heatwaves, and recolonisation occurs from deep-water and other refugia.
(4) the section on monitoring makes no mention of marine-GEO, Reef Life Survey, CPR, MBON, BioTime and other resources.
(5) line 362 - cold-water coral reefs are hardly a recent discovery. The species were described in the 19th century and they were being mapped in the 1990s.
Thus the breadth of this review lacks depth and any new advances. Thus the paper does not "Does the Conclusion identify unresolved questions / gaps / future directions?" because all the issues are very well known already.
I emphatise with the work that went into this review and efforts of many authors. However, I feel it has sacrificed depth and critical assessment of the literature in favour of breadth, and on a very well-known topic.
This is a great paper. The authors make use of recent literature and a workshop to identify key areas for progress against Aichi targets and the post 2020 review.
No comment
I have one main overarching comment for the paper which the authors may choose to consider. The central premise of the conclusion is that:
• We need improved sharing of data, information and experiences
• We need better data and understanding of marine ecosystems
• We need more data
• We should include the knowledge and views of the public
• Better communication
I would argue that whilst these are adequate suggestions they are not novel and it is here that the paper looses its imperative. They are very focused on an ecology-centric view that ‘if we have more/better data and we tell people the facts – they will make better decisions’. This viewpoint has only taken us so far and is now failing. Some suggestions:
We need a ‘systems response’ across agencies to the sharing of data, information and experiences – towards a common goal
We need to identify the indicators that link ecological to social and economic systems
We need standardised, scalable data. Not Data rich – information Poor (DRIP) data. We have lots of data! Not all of it is usable – targeted- relevant.
We need to communicate in a relevant way. Information does not =behaviour change. What do we need to communicate?
Much of the literature for this can be found in the outputs for the Defra Marine Pioneer and the Natural Capital Committee outputs. Also see
Johnson, D.E., Rees, S.E., Diz, D., Jones,P.J.S., Roberts, C., Barrio Froján, C. 2018. Securing effective and equitable coverage of Marine Protected Areas: an overview of global efforts by the Convention on Biological Diversity and analysis of national efforts on behalf of the United Kingdom" Accepted Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems.
Diz, D., Johnson, D., Ridell, M., Rees, S., Battle, J., Gjerde, K., Hennige,S., Roberts, M. 2018. Mainstreaming Marine Biodiversity into the SDGs: The Role of Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (SDG 14.5). Marine Policy Special Issue SDG Synergies for Sustainable Fisheries and Poverty Alleviation. Volume 93 251-261.
Rees, S.E., Foster, N.L., Langmead, O., Griffiths, C., Fletcher, S., Pittman, S., Johnson, D. Attrill, M.J. 2018. Bridging the divide: A framework for social-ecological coherence in Marine Protected Area network design. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. 28(3): 754-763.
This article is a nice review of some of the Aichi targets including 6, 11, 15, and 19 and it is worth publishing after a very major revision by the authors. The Abstract lacks information about how this study was designed, and why? adding that this paper was part of the mentoring program in WCMB is recommended also.
The Introduction is not will-written and the structure of the most sentences do not make sense. It also lacks the knowledge gap part, and what this review brings to science and helps to achieve the targets in a longer time.
The article has to go through a very careful English-proofread, at the moment, sentences are very long, and many sentences do not make sense and are confusing.
The authours did a good job for the literature review, but there are some areas such as deep-sea biodiversity that still many citations are missing. Regarding the Perspectives, authours have some perspectives that they have never reviewed in the review part. So, I recommend either removing those perspectives from the list or adequately review them in the review part. For example, climate change effects on marine biodiversity, deep sea, citizen science, and so on.
There are some general comments for the authors, but also the Reference list needs to be revise as many citations do not follow the same citation style.
This does not apply here as this is a review paper.
This does not apply here as this is a review paper.
Abstract
It worth mentioning that this paper is part of the WCMB mentoring program
Introduction
In general, the Introduction is very poorly written, both in English and contents. The authors should design their Introduction. In my opinion, a clear statement of why this review has been done, what is the knowledge gap, is missing. However, they briefly mentioned some background information.
Line 43. Add “WCMB” after World Conference on Marine Biodiversity
Line 44 - 45. This paper is a part of the mentoring program held in the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity 2018 (WCMB) in Montreal, Canada which aimed at connecting early-career scientists and senior scientists from across the globe”.
Line 45 to 50- needs revisions, the sentence is very long and unclear, hard to understand.
Line 52, add a comma after “.. November 2018”.
Line 52 to 55, need to be rephrased.
Line 66- add a semicolon before “however”
Review
Line 120- please add a reference
Line 124- what do you mean by “wide environment”
Line 134- move the reference to the end of the sentence
Lines 137 to 139- can you give an example here?
Line 145 – change “flexible, adaptive recovery to “flexible and adaptive recovery”
Line 158- mention the target number
Line 158 to 160 – please rephrase, grammar!
Line 172, add “for example” at the end of the sentence
Line 178, add a “comma” after for example
Line 188 – 189 Where is this happening or planned to happen? “The recent trend towards establishing very large MPAs (greater than 100,000 km2) is accelerating the expansion of their global coverage.”
Line 202 to 206 – Please revise this sentence, grammar.
Line 201 – what do you mean by “effectiveness”, you mean effectiveness of establishing MPA?
Line 240 – 241- Reference?
Line 250 – add the scientific name of the coral after “one coral species”.
Line 257 to 263 – Please rewrite, the sentence is very long and confusing.
Line 281 – Change “being in the USA” with “were in the US”
Line 292 – “but filling these knowledge gaps has become a priority” what are you trying to say here?
Line 300- which habitats?
Line 308- references?
Line 332- remove “that,”
Perspectives
Line 359 – but you have not reviewed the deep-sea except in some minor examples, I would thus recommend the authors to spend a bit more time on collecting literature review from the deep sea and how the targets 6, 11, 15, and 19 have been studied in the deep sea. You can have a look into another paper published from the same mentoring program and cite it, and also look for the literature they have used, you might find them useful (Saeedi, H., Reimer, J. D., Brandt, M. I., Dumais, P. O., Jażdżewska, A. M., Jeffery, N. W., … Costello, M. J. (2019). Global marine biodiversity in the context of achieving the Aichi Targets: ways forward and addressing data gaps. PeerJ, 7, e7221. doi:10.7717/peerj.7221).
Lines 402 to 412 – it might be useful to add some example where citizen science was successful and how it helped the biodiversity maintenance
Line 433 to 443- I see here a lack of references and data repositories such as OBIS and GBIF examples, you should review how these efforts have been done in the past and what are your suggestions to improve them.
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