Effects of Fishing Selectivity and Dynamics on the Performance of Catch-Based Data-Limited Assessment Models for Species with Different Life History Traits

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is interesting and comprehensively presented and discussed. The content is of relevance to fisheries management particularly in light of the increasing usage of data poor methods to provide advice for many small-scale and artisinal fisheries. The comparison of models is very useful for guiding future assessments and the caveats of the methods are well presented. No major comments for improvement. Just some English revisions are needed and small clarifications.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank the comments from the reviewer and have revised the manuscript accordingly.

To be specific, we clarify the abbreviation of BBmsy as which means "stock biomass (B) proportional to the biomass at maximum sustainable yield (Bmsy)."

We have improved the English of Line 82-83 to: "The impact of size or age selectivity on the performance of catch-based models has not been thoroughly explored."

Line 155-156: We revised the sentence as follows: "Since selective fishing is typically based on length rather than age in practice, we simulated length selection in this study. "

Line 157-169: We revised the sentence as follows: "We simulated three different length selectivity scenarios (S). The first scenario, S0, represented a non-selective fishery, where the chance of being caught was constant across all length classes. The second scenario, S1, simulated a fishery where smaller individuals had a greater probability to be caught. The third scenario, S2, represented a fishery where larger individuals had a greater probability of being caught (see an example in Figure 2). "

Line 334: We revised the sentence as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 336: We revised the sentence as suggested by the reviewer.

Reviewer 2 Report

I found this manuscript focused on a very interesting topic, based on a well-conducted study with a rich dataset.

In my opinion, an English language revision made by an expert could enhance its fluency in some parts.

Please try to give more effectiveness to the keywords, also avoiding the use of words already reported in the title.

Best regards

The Reviewer

Author Response

We thank the comments from the reviewer. We have revised the English as suggested by the reviewer. In addition, we changed some keywords to avoid words in the tittle as the reviewer's suggestion.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript investigates the performance of catch-based models considering different life history traits, fishing history, and different length selections.

The modelling behind the results is complex and a great number of assumptions were needed and could not exactly represent reality. But careful bibliographic research seems to have been performed.

The results are exciting and complement others already published, even more regarding species with insufficient fishing data.

I have some concerns with the use of FishBase as stated in lines 167-168. It would be preferable to find the information in scientific articles.

It would be interesting in the discussion to make some comparisons between the results obtained and real cases of managed species based on catch-based models.

It would also be important to highlight the relevance of the manuscript and what is new about the research that has been done.

I congratulate de authors.

Best Regards

Line 11 - eliminate "are lacking"

Line 159 - being caught?

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for his/her positive comments. We have revised the manuscript accordingly. Please find our detailed responses to the comments below:

1. I have some concerns with the use of FishBase as stated in lines 167-168. It would be preferable to find the information in scientific articles.

We agree that life history traits information from scientific articles are more appropriated compared to the simulated information listed in FishBase. Therefore, we have done our best to look up life history traits information for the studied species, and listed all the available information sources in Table S1. Unfortunately, the empirical length at minimum age (L0) information is unavailable for most of our studied species, thus we used the values provided in FishBase instead.

2. It would be interesting in the discussion to make some comparisons between the results obtained and real cases of managed species based on catch-based models.

We agree with the reviewer that it is important to compare our simulation results to  empirical cases. However, most of the real cases applying catch-based models lacks a comparable assessments result with comprehensive methods to evaluate the performance of the DLMs. It makes it almost impossible to compare the effects of life history traits, fishing dynamics and selectivity on the performances of DLMs for real cases. However, we added a discussion in Line 332-336 about a previous study comparing DLMs outputs with data-rich assessment methods outputs of real fish stocks. We hope this revision improves the discussion.

3. It would also be important to highlight the relevance of the manuscript and what is new about the research that has been done.

We thank the comments from the reviewer. We have added Line 299-300 to emphasize that this is the first study examining how fishing selectivity affects the performance of catch-based DLMs, and rewrote Line 306-308 to emphasize the implication of such results.

We have revised Line 11 & 159 based on the editorial comments.