Data Paper
Kunio T. Takahashi. Zooplankton monitoring using a twin NORPAC net during the 63rd Japanese Antarctic Research
Expedition in austral summer 2021–2022. Polar Data Journal. 2024, 8, p. 34–43. http://doi.org/10.20575/00000054.
(Received 4/4/2024; Accepted 5/15/2024)

1st submission
Editor Start Date: 4/10/2024
Editor Stop Date: 5/7/2024

Reviewer #1 (4/15/2024–5/7/2024)
Reviewer #2 (4/18/2024–4/20/2024)

Reviewer #1: Anonymous
In this report, the authors provide zooplankton data collected at two stations during the JARE-63 Shirase cruise. Thedataset is appropriately provided. The report does not need major revisions, but I have a minor comment.
To estimate the wet weight of small zooplankton, body length, bell height, bell diameter, shell length, trunk length,and body width were used (Table 1). It is preferable to indicate how you measured these lengths in Technical Validation.
This information was also not stated in Ukai et al. (2014).

Reviewer #2: Graham Hosie
I fully support publication of this manuscript and data. They continue a much needed series of previous publicationsof JARE NORPAC data since 1972. It is essential that the data continue to be published and made available for otherresearchers in order to understand the long-term zooplankton trends. This is essential to understand any changes in theAntarctic marine ecosystem. It is well written and well compiled. It is a pity that bad weather limited sampling, but I
know too well how difficult sampling can be in the Southern Ocean. It is also a pity that Covid-19 prevented sampling.
However, every bit of new data increases the value of the dataset exponentially. I have made the following minor
corrections to the English.
Line 20, change schedule to schedules
Line 23, change from to sinceLine 55, change canceled to cancelledLine 55, should read "and the sampling plan on JARE-63 (2021-2022) was reduced."Line 86, should that be recording instead of cording?

Great job.

Authors Response:
Thank you very much for your e-mail concerning our manuscript together with the comments from the two reviewers.
We found several important points to be improved before acceptance on this Journal. We have made some minorchanges (in red), according to referee’s comments.

Response to reviewer #1:
In this report, the authors provide zooplankton data collected at two stations during the JARE-63 Shirase cruise. The
dataset is appropriately provided. The report does not need major revisions, but I have a minor comment.
To estimate the wet weight of small zooplankton, body length, bell height, bell diameter, shell length, trunk length,and body width were used (Table 1). It is preferable to indicate how you measured these lengths in Technical Validation.
This information was also not stated in Ukai et al. (2014).
A: added the following sentence for clarify this pointed out.
Lines 133-134: The lengths of body parts for calculation were measured using a stereo-microscope (SMZ1500, Nikon,Japan).

Response to reviewer #2:
I fully support publication of this manuscript and data. They continue a much needed series of previous publicationsof JARE NORPAC data since 1972. It is essential that the data continue to be published and made available for otherresearchers in order to understand the long-term zooplankton trends. This is essential to understand any changes in theAntarctic marine ecosystem. It is well written and well compiled. It is a pity that bad weather limited sampling, but I
know too well how difficult sampling can be in the Southern Ocean. It is also a pity that Covid-19 prevented sampling.
However, every bit of new data increases the value of the dataset exponentially. I have made the following minor
corrections to the English.
Line 20, change schedule to schedules
Line 20: change “schedule” to “schedules”.
Line 23, change from to sinceLine 23: change “from” to “since”.
Line 55, change canceled to cancelledLine 55: change “canceled” to “cancelled”.
Line 55, should read "and the sampling plan on JARE-63 (2021-2022) was reduced."Line 55: change to "and the sampling plan on JARE-63 (2021-2022) was reduced."Line 86, should that be recording instead of cording?
Line 86: change the sentence for clarify this pointed out.
“the name of the station on which the sampling was conducted”

We hope that our revisions will improve the manuscript to your agreement.

2nd submission
Editor Start Date: 5/14/2024
Editor Stop Date: 5/15/2024

Editor comments to the Author: Sakae Kudoh
I checked the corrected version and confirmed that it had been corrected by incorporating comments from tworeviewers. It is judged that it can be accepted in this state.

Editorial Office’s note
Calculate checksum date: 5/16/2024
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Hash link: http://id.nii.ac.jp/1434/00000054 > hash list