The revised version of the manuscript has addressed Reviewer 2’s comments satisfactorily. However, given Reviewer 1’s negative assessment and the relatively brief nature of this review report, I undertook an additional reading of the manuscript. I have identified a few minor points that should be addressed before the manuscript can be finally published.

In line 107, you state that the average descent velocity was 1 m s⁻¹. However, the sampling frequency is not specified, although it determines the vertical resolution (in m) of the measurements.

Table A3 reports a “stratification index”, but this parameter does not appear to be defined anywhere in the manuscript.

Concerning stratification, the manuscript places considerable emphasis on thermal stratification. However, salinity is also highly variable in estuarine environments and may significantly contribute to density stratification. Moreover, Table A3 includes the depth of the pycnocline. This raises the question of why thermal stratification is given such prominence throughout the manuscript. For example, line 43 refers to barriers to organism movements associated with the thermocline, while Section 2.2 is largely devoted to estimating thermocline depth. In line 141, the authors state: “we chose to use temperature in the present study as an indicator of vertical stratification since some measurements of salinity were not recorded.” However, most profiles appear to contain salinity information, as pycnocline depths are reported in Table A3 for all time series. You should clarify this point and discuss in more detail the relationship between the thermocline and the pycnocline in the dataset. In some series, the depths of these two features appear similar, whereas in others they differ substantially. From an ecological perspective, would organisms be expected to respond more strongly to density stratification or to temperature stratification? Additional discussion on these issues would strengthen the manuscript and help justify the methodological choices made.

The authors have taken into account my last minor comments.