Assessment of Heavy Metals Eluted from Materials Utilized in Artificial Reefs Implemented in South Korea

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Your manuscript bears a lot of interesting, novel, and internationally important information about a really urgent issue. Indeed, it deserves being published in such a good journal as “JMSE”. However, some additions and re-organizations are necessary.

1)      Key words: please, do not use the words from the title

2)      Introduction, paragraph 1: please, explain clearly how macro-algae forests are linked to artificial reefs?

3)      Section 2 should start with a subsection characterizing the study area, its geographical and ecological setting.

4)      Materials and Methods: in which laboratory were the analyses done?

5)      Results MUST be different from Discussion. This is common requirement in high-class international journals. Results = description of your direct findings. Discussion = what do your findings mean? What I see now in the section 3 are only findings. This means Discussion will require significant additions and putting into the international research context.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Manuscript ID: jmse-1973262

Letter of Review Report

Dear Editors and Authors,

The reviewer would like to submit the reviewed manuscript for the study entitled “Assessment of Heavy Metals Eluted from Materials Utilized in Artificial Reefs implemented in South Korea” for consideration for publication in the JMSE (ISSN 2077-1312).

After the review process, the reviewer would like to give some critical thinking and idea to help authors get their job done efficiently.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This research suggests the assessment of heavy metals eluted from materials utilized in artificial reefs implemented in South Korea. This study examined the effect of concrete, steel, and steel slag artificial reefs on As, Cd, Cr6+, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn concentrations in marine ecosystems. The authors studied heavy metals (HMs) in saltwater and aquatic species in the East Sea, South Korea, and conducted an indoor elution experiment. Field investigation and elution experiment HM concentrations met environmental guidelines. Cr6+ elution from concrete models was confirmed. However, it may be minor in marine ecosystems. The effect of concrete, steel, and steel slag ARs on HM concentration in the maritime environment was minimal. In conclusion, the reviewer found that the paper has merits and could be acceptable to publish in future forms. Therefore, please revise the manuscript according to the reviewer’s comments.

Here are the specific comments and suggestions:

- This study contributes significantly to our knowledge and should be highlighted in the introduction. Some practical implementations of the authors' results are needed in practice or as a basis for further research.

- “Figure 3. Heat map of the concentrations of heavy metals in marine organisms attached to the natural rock (control case) and artificial reefs. They were collected in 2021.06, 2021.09, 2021.11, and 2022.01.” Please rename the figure with a noun or noun phrase. In this manuscript, the authors used sentences.

- Figure 6: Please explain the word “control” (besides concrete, triton, and steel) in Figure 6.

- Figures in the text: Please remove parentheses outside the figures (lines 177, 184,  etc.)

- Table in the text: Please remove parentheses outside it(lines 117)

- Citation in the text and references should be followed the journal template. This research has a shortage of citations. The reviewer suggests that you should search the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering or other Journals for more references that could be used to enrich your literature review. Generally, a manuscript (average) will have about 35-50 papers. References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets—e.g., [1] or [2,3], or [4–6]. In the text, reference numbers should be in square brackets [ ] and placed before the punctuation; for example, [1], [1–3], or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example, [5] (p. 10) or [6] (pp. 101–105).

- Please rewrite this sentence “These results reveal that the effect of ARs made of concrete, steel, and steel slag on the concentration of HMs in the marine environment was insignificant.” It is a general statement, and please specify it. Also, please give a recommendation or a solution for it.

Questions:

- How did the authors validate the results?

- What is the main limitation of this study, and what is your further research? Please explain in Section 4(conclusions). - The authors should emphasize what has been solved from previous studies and research gaps that need further investigation.

I highly appreciate the author’s work. The reviewer is impressed with the paper's findings and the value of the author’s efforts.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

The Reviewer

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, I'm fully satisfied with your revisions. Your manuscript looks perfect now.