General Comments

This study presents some high-quality high-resolution physical oceanographic data in an interesting area in the Mediterranean Sea that is not highly accessible and hosts a cold water coral community. Given that the data collection will continue and future data be accessible to the scientific community, it certainly meets the ESSD criteria for data availability. The presentation of the instruments, data collection, processing as well as quality control is very detailed and I believe in the quality of the data (although I may not have the most appropriated expertise to judge that).

However, I end up reading through the manuscript feeling unsatisfactory in certain aspects. I agreed to review this manuscript mainly because my personal research interest in cold water corals. This manuscript is instead mainly a technical report on the physical oceanographic data only, without presentation of the biogeochemical or sediment trap data. While I understand the additional data collection and processing may take more time, I do not see a logical plan from the authors as to how these additional data can be integrated into the current physical oceanographic data. Even if the biogeochemical and sediment trap data are not ready, I would at least like to see in what aspects the current physical oceanographic data can help up better monitor the growth environment of the coral community. I think the dataset will have higher impacts in the scientific community and the general public if these points can be addressed.

Specific Scientific Comments

Line 114 & 119: Just out of curiosity, why is the precision for the two temperature sensors on the ADCPs so different? Also 0.4°C uncertainty seems pretty large for temperature measurements.

Line 180: For this paragraph, I am not sure about how the authors are integrating sediment trap and geochemical data with the physical oceanography data given the current description. I think a more logical description of how all these different datasets are related and will be used together is needed.

Figure 5: I am not sure what all the different symbols mean for this plot.

Line 262: I am not sure what “interest” means here

Line 315: This is one of the more interesting observations that the effect of the heat wave was not significant at the station. I feel like it warrants a slightly more detailed analysis as to why that is, given the current knowledge about the circulation patterns in the area, although I understand the ESSD journal is more focused on the presentation of the data.

Technical Comments

Line 14 and 18: “2-year” instead of “2 years”

Line 63: “Panel (c)” instead of “the panel (c)”

Line 66: “generate” instead of “originate”

Line 69–72: This is an incomplete sentence without a verb. Either rewrite it, or connect it with the previous sentence with a colon.

Line 83: “temporal-spatial” instead of “time-spatial”

Line 91 & 142: “first” instead of “firstly”

Line 128: remove “respectively”

Table 1: In the rows corresponding to Flags 2 and 4, the description sentences are broken in two lines awkwardly

Line 179: “presented” instead of “proposed”, “shows” instead of “is well shown as well”

Line 181: “trap” instead of “traps”

Line 223: “With regards to” instead of “As regards”

Line 278: I don’t know what “NC” means here and cannot find previous mentions of the abbreviation.

Line 318: “reached” instead of “was reached”