Review of ‘Dataset of Depth/Temperature profiles obtained in the period 2012-2020 using commercial fishing vessels of the AdriFOOS fleet in the Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean Sea)’ by Penna et al.

This paper is a compilation of data collected from fishing vessels in the AdriFOOS fleet in the Adriatic Sea from 2012-2020. There is a growing interest in using fishing vessels as platforms of opportunity to collect oceanographic data, and this dataset is from one of the longer more established efforts. As such this dataset and paper are worthwhile and valuable and likely to be reused. However as this is a rapidly growing area, and there is potential for the data to be reused, there is a need for standardisation and best practices in data collation, QC and metadata standards.

I found the paper to be a bit long and rambling in some sections. It contains a lot of extra information that may be important to the AdriFOOS program, but not so important to the sharing of temperature data.  E.g the sections describing the database and dashboard are interesting, but perhaps not necessary here.  I feel like some aspects of the paper are ancillary to the data descriptor paper itself.  In Section 3 there has been an attempt to describe the entire AdriFOOS data base and forecast system, but this paper is perhaps not the right place.  e.g Section 3.3.1 Wave forecasting module – this is unrelated to the archival of fishing vessel data.  This could possibly be moved to a section at the end ‘data usage’ but is not necessary and could also be deleted.  Section 3.3.2 describes the data base process. Again interesting, but somewhat ancillary to the data itself. Section 3.3.3 describes the web interface, but as far as I can tell, readers can’t actually log in or see it? So is it necessary for the data user? If the paper is to describe the AdriFOOS system, then this is all interesting, but it is Section 4 that is the most valuable for the data user.  Additionally the section on how to access the CMEMs model output in ODV is superfluous to the goals of the paper. 

I found the QC section to be lacking in important detail necessary for a user to know the QC tests that had been undertaken in order to trust and reuse the data.

Regarding the data files themselves, a reviewer has posted comments on the data formats, which I support hence I have not commented specifically here. However, I recommend giving strong consideration to making the files CF compliant. This will be one step closer to ensuring best practice – which is stated as one of the goals of the paper.

The paper mentions a few times the dataset of Penna et al 2020. It was not clear to me what the differences are between the two datasets. Perhaps the editor can look at this. Does the dataset need to be new to be included in ESSD? Or is the data descriptor paper enough? 

Additionally, there were some clunky language expressions which I have attempted to point out below. There are too many acronyms and a lot of jargon and programs/funding bodies/ agencies mentioned which make the paper laborious to read. Please try to strip out all the extraneous details that are not necessary to understand the data.

In summary I think the data set is novel and I applaud the authors attempts to make the data public and open access, but I feel the authors need to tighten the manuscript substantially. If the purpose of the paper is to describe the dataset and QA/QC, then more detail and focus needs to be on this aspect. If the purpose is to describe the entire program, then perhaps a different journal/ outlet would be better.

Detailed comments.

Title:

‘obtained in the period’ could be phrased more simply as ‘from 2012-2020’

Is ‘Mediterranean Sea’ necessary?

Abstract

It would be easier for the reader if you moved the second sentence in the abstract up to be the first sentence. For example,

In the last decade an enormous amount of georeferenced oceanographic (temperature and pressure) data has been collected through the use of commercial fishing vessels operating in the Adriatic Sea. This data is co-located with catch data. This document describes….

Before AdriFOOS please add ‘fishing fleet infrastructure (AdriFOOS) to make it easier for the reader.

Please avoid/ remove many of the acronyms (CNR, IBRIM) spell out acronyms that are used infrequently and don’t bother using the acronym.

Line 26 what does ‘Ancona Section’ mean is this detail necessary? It sounds like an ocean transect.

Line 30: replace ‘ see below’ with ‘see Section 2’

Line 32: remove ‘that demonstrated to be’

Line 37:’An updated….’ It is not clear what is the update and what was the previous system.

Line 42: what are ‘different FOOS modular conformations’ please expand.  I don’t think conformation is the correct word, but I don’t understand what you are saying.

Line 47: replace ‘besides’ with ‘in addition’ (is this what you mean?)

Line 48: replace ‘by’ with ‘of’ and ‘in land’ with ‘on land’ or ‘land based’

Line 50: replace ‘along’ with ‘through’

Line 60: remove ‘the’ from ‘the fishing’. Replace ‘paragraph’ with ‘section’.  Is 3.1 the correct section reference? I can’t see the three phases referred to in section 3.1.

Line 60-61: In the interest of using standardised language and working towards best practices, I suggest you change the wording of the three phases as follows.

‘profile’ change to  ‘down cast’

‘permanence on the bottom’ change to   ‘horizontal profile’ either on the bottom (or at the depth at which the fishing gear operates) and

‘ascent’ change to  ‘up cast’

Line 63 “Recently, a dataset containing 14810 depth (pressure)/temperature profiles has been made accessible (Penna et al., 2020);”  How is this paper and dataset different to Penna et al 2020, and the dataset that is included? ? Or if this paper describes this dataset, state that.

I see on lines 274-275 that you state a difference between the formatting of the two datasets. Is this all (CSV versus netcdf?)  I suggest that you put this up front in the introduction (Line 63) where I first had this question. Again on line 319 I still don’t understand the difference between the 2 different datasets.

Line 68: replace model with models

Line 70: - the main aim of this paper is to is to specifically describe the collection, storage, quality assurance and control procedures

Line 71: – replace ‘above mentioned’ with ‘dataset of Penna et al 2020’ if indeed it is the same dataset.

Line 77: replace ‘large’ with ‘wide’

Line 101: I don’t understand the reference to ‘inland server’.  Is this a server on the ship? Or is it a land based data centre? Please clarify throughout the paper, and also identify in Figure 2. You talk about 3 functional components, perhaps draw boxes around the 3 components in Figure 2. Perhaps I mis-understood that the logos are the data centres

Line 78-79: remove  capital letters on northern southern and central, not proper nouns.

Lines 75-90: I am not sure if all this detail is needed for the data descriptor paper.

Line80: Please include the sills that are referred to and the Ionian Sea, Otranto… on Figure 1 if it is important, or delete. Do we need to know all these names for a data paper, if so, mark on Figure 1, otherwise delete? Likewise Po River.

Line 84: after (Poulin, 2001) add ‘.’

Lines 80-95:  I don’t’ think we need this much detail here. It is not necessary as per the aims of the paper on line 70. You could add in the introduction a single sentence stating the region is important for fisheries.

Line 103: add these three core components to Figure 2.

Line 110: replace gears with gear. Always singular in this context.

Line 111: what is the other ‘reliable oceanographic data’.  expand or delete.

Line 114: do we need to know ‘Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)’, could you replace with ‘plastic’

Line 114: replace gears with gear.

Line 116: new paragraph at ‘Since’

Line 120: replace ‘paragraph’ with ‘section’.

Line 122: What is a concentrator hub? Describe what it does ?

Lines 123-135 See comments above re down cast, horizontal profile and up cast.

Line 3.3 change Inland  to Land based?

Line 165-170, Section 3.3.1 delete or move

Line 173 change validated to QC’d ? Is this what you mean?

Line 178 what does ‘specular’ mean? ‘mirrored’? (and line 198)

Line 178 change crypted to encrypted?

Line 184 – GSP do you mean GPS?

Line 185 change fishermen to fishers

Line 190 validated? Do you mean QC’d ? 

Line 190 what is ‘paragraph’ 4? Do you mean section?

Line 191 the validation / QC flags are important where are they described? What are the codes and the data quality assignment? Where is this described (This is the sort of information that belongs in this paper and is very important for data re-use and interoperability. )

As stated above, although interesting, I don’t feel section 3 really belongs here in the data paper.

Line 220 Section 4 What are the accuracies and precisions of the sensors? Is this information in the data files as well

Line 225 What QC steps are carried out? This information is important for the user.

Line 227 as per Line 60-61: In the interest of using standardised language I   suggest you change the wording of the three phases as follows

‘profile’ change to  ‘down cast’

‘permanence on the bottom’ change to   ‘horizontal profile’ either on the bottom (or at the depth at which the fishing gear operates) and

‘ascent’ change to  ‘up cast’

Line 242 what are the spike criteria

Lines 245-250, this is the opportunity to really clarify what QC has been done on the data.  What does ‘flagging of wrong profiles’ mean? How is it determined they are wrong (and then the example of Figure 7 is not flagged?) what are the exact tests, and how are they implemented. This information is really important for data users.  Then you state that visual inspection is the most delicate part of the process, so these tests and inspections should really be articulated clearly so that there is continuity in the datasets.

Line 253 change  ‘All flags used follow the NERC Vocabulary server standard L20 vocabulary provided by Seadatanet measurand qualifier flags (Seadatanet 2022)’. Please state what they are for the reader so there is no need to go and look them up.

Line 264 ‘during the permanence of the fishing gears close to the bottom’? What does this mean? Change language as per above. 

Line 265 change woth to worth.

Lines 333-339 and Figure 13 Please include how many data points are used for each section?  It may not be feasible to call it a ‘season’ if there is insufficient data coverage.

Lines 355 to Lines368 Suggest this is deleted not necessary for a temperature data descriptor paper. Starting ‘to create….considered suitable for ‘

Start at line 388, We visually compared adjacent…. I disagree that there is ‘generally good correspondence’. Indeed the adrifoos data shows that the model is far to smooth and is missing the vertical structure, that’s why this program is important… If the model were perfect you wouldn’t need this data. This is clarified in lines 375 , but don’t

Lines 394-407 Not necessary as you don’t include fishing data.  I suggest you condense this section to 1 sentence describing future opportunities. Similarly delete Figure 15.

Figures

Figure 1: Replace ‘up-right rectangle’ with ‘top right inset’. Are the red dots the positions of ALL the data? If so, say this. It would be helpful to put the section from Figure 13 on Figure 1.

Figure 2: It would be helpful to expand the figure caption to show what the logos all mean etc.

Figure 3: pls spell out NKE or add ‘temperature and pressure’ sensors.  What is the yellow? Are they in the plastic housing ? if so, state.

Figure 4: The screen shots are interesting, but they are too small to read, should probably be in English for this journal. You can add detail to the caption to describe what each one shows. What are the different coloured bars and lines? Describe the figure in the caption.

Figures 5 and 6 are  interesting from a program point of view but how does it help use or reuse the data?

Figure 7b, Typo in Temperature units.

Figures 8, 9, 10,11  are nice they are a great visualisation of the dataset presented.

Figure 13: What is ‘an evidenced sea section’ ?

It would be better to put all the sections on the same x-axis, starting at zero so they can be aligned. It would be better if they were also on the same colour bar range for easy comparison. At the very least, please write in the caption that the colour bar is different for each panel. The data at the surface on panel d at 65 km looks strange.  Is this a spike that has been missed in QC?

I note that you mention best practice procedures to be used while approaching this matter (Martinelli et al., 2016; Möller et al., 2019) – but what do these best practices describe?

Figure 15

Not necessary for describing temperature data.  You don’t share the fisheries data, so save this figure for a different paper.

Acknowledgements

In my country it would be considered polite to acknowledge all the fishers and the vessels that participate in the program, you might like to consider the same.

Review of ‘Dataset of Depth/Temperature profiles obtained in the period 2012-2020 using commercial fishing vessels of the AdriFOOS fleet in the Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean Sea)’ by Penna et al.

The manuscript describes oceanographic data acquired in the Adriatic Sea from 2012 to 2020 using both oceanographic and fishing vessels as vessels of opportunity through the Fishery and Oceanography Observing System (FOOS), here called AdriFOOS, developed by the Italian National Research Council (CNR). The acquired data are vertical and horizontal profiles, at constant depths, of temperature and pressure/depth (TP) along the entire Adriatic basin, carried out during fishing activities.

The work is very interesting and could be replicated in other areas not only in the Mediterranean. However, this implies that the authors are clear, concise and exhaustive in the description of the instruments, the acquisition methods and subsequent data quality control, as well as in methods and frequency of sensor calibrations. Since the title is "Dataset of Depth/Temperature profiles obtained in the period 2012-2020 using commercial fishing vessels of the AdriFOOS fleet in the Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean Sea)", the authors should mainly focus on instruments and such data and only mention the AdriFOOS system as a whole. Instead they dwell on descriptions of the system, losing sight of the data and, then, confusing the reader, also because the work is thus very long. Authors should therefore decide whether to stick with the title and drastically reduce the descriptive part to the system or change the title and reorganize the work as a whole.

Personally I would suggest the first choice, totally focusing on the TP data, and in such a direction I continue my review. In the introduction you write that “some collected datasets were already shared on public repositories …………….(e.g. Puillat et al., 2014; Gaughan et al., 2015; Sparnocchia et al., 2017).”, that are three project reports, long to be read and often temporary on the web. I would suggest a table with a list of the already existing open repositories of the data (DOI or any address).

In methodologies, the first two subparagraphs are fine, with some corrections (see specific comments). In 3.1 there is a mention of acquired conductivity data through the NKE STPS but then it is no longer mentioned along the paper (apart at line 263). Explain why conductivity data are not considered in this work, or if they are just for temperature/pressure. Subparagraph 3.3.1 should be eliminated because it is disconnected from the rest as it is written, not giving additional information on the TP data. 3.3.2 should be summarized. If some parts refer to data activities, they should be moved to the corresponding paragraph. I would eliminate par. 3.3.3. or it should be drastically reduced. Paragraph 4 is very important but needs to be rewritten because it seems to be divided into two specular parts which confuse the reader a bit. It is necessary to describe how the sensors are calibrated instead of just putting “see Martinelli et al., 2016”.

Paragraph 5 on Data records is fine even if I would eliminate some sentences and several figures (see specific comments) that I consider superfluous.

In the Results at paragraph 7, several figures in the ODV with the relative descriptions must be eliminated and the paragraph must be completely revised (see specific comments). Authors could eventually create a previous paragraph where they can describe the potentiality of the dataset. Here, often, other data and the potentiality of AdriFOOS is given that is outside the aim of the paper.