It Is a Balancing Act: The Interface of Scientific Evidence and Policy in Support of Effective Marine Environmental Management
, Andrew B. Gill 1,†, Khatija Alliji 2, Silvana N. R. Birchenough 1, Sylvia Blake 1, Holly Buckley 1, Charlotte Clarke 1, Stacey Clarke 3, Nathan Edmonds 3, Leila Fonseca 1, Freya Goodsir 1, Andrew Griffith 1, Adrian Judd 1, Rachel Mulholland 1, Joe Perry 1, Karema Randall 1 and Daniel Wood 1
Hiroyuki Yamamoto
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The scheme in Figure 1 should be improved to give a clearer picture of the plan initiative from academia to politics. The author uses a number of arrows to show the connection between academia and politics. However, rather than connectivity, it is better to show the main elements comprising both academia and politics. The position of stakeholders in this diagram needs to be clarified.
The full name of Cefa should be described in the text. Details of the Cefa expert workshops need to be described, as they are likely to form the main context of this manuscript. Information such as the frequency of the workshops and the type of experts who attend them needs to be clarified.
It is not made clear in the text why these four cases listed in Table 1 have been mentioned from Cefa workshop. Human activities such as fishing, gas and oil exploitation, and seabed mining are also likely candidates for this theme.
Figure 2: The full spelling of ES should be described.
Abbreviations such as Cefa, ORJPI, MCAA, MCZ, COWRIE, WREW, etc. are used, but no detailed notation is given.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I have read with interest the manuscript entitled, “It’s a Balancing Act: The Interface of Scientific Evidence and Policy in Support of Effective Marine Environmental Management”. The authors reviewed role of science and scientific evidence in effective management of marine environment. They analyzed currently applied marine management practices in the U K for four marine sectors. They organized Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) workshops for reviewing research, assessments, monitoring, regulations & policy for effective marine management. The manuscript has presented many insights about the effective marine environmental management. However, it is not flawless. My comments on the manuscript:
The abstract lacks many information. It does not describe the methodology adopted clearly. It has also not presented the key findings of the study. Lines 23-26: “The importance-----robustness of assessments”. This sentence is not complete, please check. In introduction section please mention about the other methods which may be utilized to provide effective marine management and what are the advantages of workshop method over the other ones. What are the basic sources of materials used for workshop? How many Cefas experts were invited? What were their specializations? What are the limits and risk in the components of marine management? Please discuss briefly the rationale for selecting the elements of components for easy understanding. Please explain the reasons noted for combining case studies. Please mention the scoring criteria in methodological section. It would be easier for a reader if you please prepare flowchart of how your study progressed. Please provide key findings in the conclusion section. Limitation of the study, if any may also be mentioned in the conclusion section.
I hope that the above mentioned comments may be useful for improving the overall quality of the work.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Accept
