Fishing Industry Perspectives on Sea-Level Rise Risk and Adaptation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper reports on a study about articulated responses of individuals representing the fishery sector in three coastal communities in Florida to sea level rise scenarios and related inundation of parts of the respective area. This topic is relevant as the role of individuals in wise adaption to climate change and coastal management has been proven to be crucial and less well understood as well.
The authors report about their fieldwork and their interaction with a quite significant number of interviewees. A broad set of relevant questions has been discussed with the sector representatives. Proper documentation and socio-statistical analysis have also been conducted according to modern standards as reported by the authors. This justifies the potential of the study to contribute to urgently needed solutions in climate management and being worth publishing in the water journal. Unfortunately, there is a considerable mismatch of this potential and the present way of presenting main results, of discussing possible drivers in climate adaptation and of emphasising generic findings.
Conceptual re-consideration and a more in-depth discussion in a significantly revised version of the paper should take the following into account -
- The maps on future SLR and inundation scenarios reflect a no-action approach. It is unlikely that no measures will be taken to combat future storm surges etc. This has to be clearly stated as it implies a certain attitude of the participating stakeholders.
- The classification in three groups of reaction, i.e. retreat, stay with/without adaptation, over-simplifies the complexity of strategies or measures which have been presented to the interviewees or have been argued by the them. There is no reason given for this classification which is not helpful in understanding prevailing drivers for possible action taking of the individuals. The readers interest is directed to learn about the underlying reasons for a certain perception of the problem. Readers also want to know how the perception triggers individual reaction. Further elaboration on this can help to upgrade this somewhat descriptive paper to a paper with more explanatory power.
- The authors identify the age being a common denominator for the articulated ways to respond to SLR. This is a driver which has been identified to be of relevance in other studies on climate adaptation. The authors should check literature for this topic and make use of this source of evidence in a revised discussion. In this regard, the current Chapter 4 is not a Discussion, but should be considered as a part of the Results when re-working the paper. The Discussion has to embed this study and related findings into literature more thoroughly.
- Interestingly, the authors introduce ´worldviews´ of the divergent groups of deniers and believers with respect to climate change (starting at line 455). This can provide a key to further elaboration on criteria that are crucial for individual opting for certain ways in adaptation. The authors also identify certain categories of the reasoning for individual attitudes to adaptation (starting at line 490 and 516). It remains unclear whether worldviews and categories are predetermined (based on the questions of the interviews) or result from a qualitative or statistical analysis of the transcripts. The authors must elaborate on this in the chapters Methods and Results/Discussion as well.
- There is another detail that makes me pause. The authors report on an interviewee who base his attitude on a negative impact of new hard coastal protection measures. Seawalls modify environmental processes which result in a change of individual behaviour, i.e. make him to stay away from swimming. Such cascades in reasoning and decision taking reflect the complexity of the problem and are likely to provide better insight into ways and barriers in climate adaptation.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1,
We wish to re-submit our original research article entitled, “Fishing Industry Perspectives on Sea-level Rise Risk and Adaptation,” for consideration by Water. We received many insightful comments from three reviewers and have revised the manuscript to address these comments At the bottom of this letter we outline the specific changes made based on your review. All of the changes have been completed in tracked changes. We believe this manuscript is appropriate for and would interest readers of Water, and we appreciate your review of our manuscript.
Comment 1: The maps on future SLR and inundation scenarios reflect a no-action approach. It is unlikely that no measures will be taken to combat future storm surges etc. This has to be clearly stated as it implies a certain attitude of the participating stakeholders.
Response: Thank you for this comment. When I showed the SLR scenario to the subjects, I explained that it was a hypothetical situation in which the sea-level rises and no preventative actions are taken to protect the coast. This information has been added to the manuscript in line #165.
Comment 2: The classification in three groups of reaction, i.e. retreat, stay with/without adaptation, over-simplifies the complexity of strategies or measures which have been presented to the interviewees or have been argued by the them. There is no reason given for this classification which is not helpful in understanding prevailing drivers for possible action taking of the individuals. The readers interest is directed to learn about the underlying reasons for a certain perception of the problem. Readers also want to know how the perception triggers individual reaction. Further elaboration on this can help to upgrade this somewhat descriptive paper to a paper with more explanatory power.
Response: This is a fair point, but in order to better understand the complexities of choice, we first needed to learn of what actions would be most likely to be taken. That is, without an understanding on whether respondents would choose to remain or leave, it becomes difficult to interpret what perceptions drive that motivation. Also, if perceptions are first ascertained, it creates a scenario where the interviewer may in fact drive motivations. That is, if we started to ask what conditions may prompt a particular action instead of asking the question the other way around, we set the ground for perceptions we helped to create, upgrade, or even cement.
In terms of moving towards explanation, it is clear that place plays a role, as do factors such as age, in determining whether individuals are willing to move. Thus, the comment is a bit vague in terms of wanting the research to determine why the perceptions exist, as those are what drive the views (and are described). We are also very careful in staying away from explanatory discussions, as in our view, even within a few hundred miles of each other, superficially similar communities and stakeholders maintain very differing views, formed over a complex of past experiences, dependency, tenure, and community composition. Thus, to suggest that there is a magical formula (i.e., explanatory power) simplifies the complexity related to place.
Comment 3: The authors identify the age being a common denominator for the articulated ways to respond to SLR. This is a driver which has been identified to be of relevance in other studies on climate adaptation. The authors should check literature for this topic and make use of this source of evidence in a revised discussion. In this regard, the current Chapter 4 is not a Discussion, but should be considered as a part of the Results when re-working the paper. The Discussion has to embed this study and related findings into literature more thoroughly.
Response: This is a good point, and it is well taken. We have rewritten the discussion per your suggestion and referenced three studies that showed that climate change belief certainty and climate change risk perception are negatively correlated with age (Rothermich et al. 2021; Poortinga et al. 2011; and Cain et al. 2020).
Comment 4: Interestingly, the authors introduce ´worldviews´ of the divergent groups of deniers and believers with respect to climate change (starting at line 455). This can provide a key to further elaboration on criteria that are crucial for individual opting for certain ways in adaptation. The authors also identify certain categories of the reasoning for individual attitudes to adaptation (starting at line 490 and 516). It remains unclear whether worldviews and categories are predetermined (based on the questions of the interviews) or result from a qualitative or statistical analysis of the transcripts. The authors must elaborate on this in the chapters Methods and Results/Discussion as well.
Response: Thank you for this comment. To clarify, the worldviews and categories of “climate change believer” and “climate change denier” were not predetermined and Individual’s worldviews were gleaned from a qualitative analysis of the transcripts. The interview questions used to assess an individual's worldview included, “On a scale of one to ten how worried are you about SLR?”, “Based on your experience fishing, have you seen any large environmental changes in the areas that you fish in over time?”, “How would you rank climate change in terms of how it may affect your fishing operation (1-5, where 1 is high impact and 5 is no impact)?” This information was added to the end of section 2.4 on data analysis.
Comment 5: There is another detail that makes me pause. The authors report on an interviewee who base his attitude on a negative impact of new hard coastal protection measures. Seawalls modify environmental processes which result in a change of individual behaviour, i.e. make him to stay away from swimming. Such cascades in reasoning and decision taking reflect the complexity of the problem and are likely to provide better insight into ways and barriers in climate adaptation.
Response: Thank you for this comment. The interviewee who bases his attitude on the negative impact of new hard coastal protection measures does not represent a cascade in reasoning but is basing his decision off of his personal experience - the small canal where boats are kept near his house in Conch Key was cleaner when it held free-flowing water and water flow was not stymied by a neighbor’s concrete dock which was built years ago. After the concrete dock was built, the water became less clean. The section has been edited for clarity and now reads, “Interestingly, one of the respondents who chose “retreat” as his response was a commercial fisherman who does not believe in climate change but who dislikes raised concrete docks which he believes have caused a decrease in the water quality in the canal next to his home that he used to swim in years ago when he was younger. He explained that if concrete docks become the norm, he will leave the island but stay in the Florida Keys.” Please let us know if this addresses your comment or if further clarification is needed.
Thank you for your review,
The Authors
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall, the results are interested and worth publication. However, the manuscript requires significant edits, particularly a rewriting of the abstract, but also work on transitioning between sections and a better literature review to situation the piece in the adaptation literature. There is a very long introduction to climate change that takes much too long to get to the specific research addressed here. A very long and much too general introduction to climate change impact in Florida, where most well informed readers would already know much of this. Get to this study faster. Additional citations that look at how these communities are embedded in larger policy making systems and some discussion of what state and local governments are doing around SLR would also improve the manuscript. It would be useful to have a dedicated literature review section that talks about decision making under climate risk scenarios and the impact of community characteristics. I would suggest looking at:
See:
Kauneckis & Martin, 2020, Patterns of cooperation among coastal communities responding to climate risks, Journal of Coastal Management, 48(4): 257-274.
Kettle, N. P., & Dow, K. (2014). The Role of Perceived Risk, Uncertainty, and Trust on Coastal Climate Change Adaptation Planning. Environment and Behavior, 48(4), 579–606.
Leiserowitz, A. (2006). Climate change risk perception and policy preferences: The role of affect, imagery, and values. Climatic Change, 77(1), 45–72.
Additional comments specific to the manuscript are below:
Line 18, the authors state “that place matters”. Ok, but this is both a misunderstanding of the role of generalized theory and the rich literature on how place matters. It is not an interesting result without a little more detail offered in the abstract. There are interesting results that can replace this somewhat flippant phrase.
Line 57-64. Text is very unclear and does not directly related to the study.
Line 76. A very abrupt transition into the subject of this study. This should be the beginning of the article.
Line 121-122. How exactly are these communities different? If this was a purposive sample of cases, explain the logic of case selection. A table might be useful.
Formatting and empty spaces before the images needs to be addressed.
Line 187. Maps are mislabeled. The first in the comparative maps is labeled “Projected Sea Level Rise in 2020”, don’t you mean “contemporary sea levels”?
Figure 10 is the most interesting result. Those results should be mentioned in the abstract. The abstract should be rewritten to describe all the results better.
Citations appear to be incomplete.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,
We wish to re-submit our original research article entitled, “Fishing Industry Perspectives on Sea-level Rise Risk and Adaptation,” for consideration by Water. We received many insightful comments from three reviewers and have revised the manuscript to address these comments At the bottom of this letter we outline the specific changes made based on your review. All of the changes have been completed in tracked changes. We believe this manuscript is appropriate for and would interest readers of Water, and we appreciate your review of our manuscript.
Comment 1: Overall, the results are interested and worth publication. However, the manuscript requires significant edits, particularly a rewriting of the abstract, but also work on transitioning between sections and a better literature review to situation the piece in the adaptation literature. There is a very long introduction to climate change that takes much too long to get to the specific research addressed here. A very long and much too general introduction to climate change impact in Florida, where most well informed readers would already know much of this. Get to this study faster. Additional citations that look at how these communities are embedded in larger policy making systems and some discussion of what state and local governments are doing around SLR would also improve the manuscript. It would be useful to have a dedicated literature review section that talks about decision making under climate risk scenarios and the impact of community characteristics. I would suggest looking at:
See:
Kauneckis & Martin, 2020, Patterns of cooperation among coastal communities responding to climate risks, Journal of Coastal Management, 48(4): 257-274.
Kettle, N. P., & Dow, K. (2014). The Role of Perceived Risk, Uncertainty, and Trust on Coastal Climate Change Adaptation Planning. Environment and Behavior, 48(4), 579–606.
Leiserowitz, A. (2006). Climate change risk perception and policy preferences: The role of affect, imagery, and values. Climatic Change, 77(1), 45–72.
Response: Thank you for reading and reviewing our paper. The abstract, discussion, and conclusion have been rewritten per your guidance. The introduction has been shortened, transitions improved, and two of the papers you suggested have been cited (Kauneckis & Martin (2020) and Leiserowitz (2006)).
Comment 2: Line 18, the authors state “that place matters”. Ok, but this is both a misunderstanding of the role of generalized theory and the rich literature on how place matters. It is not an interesting result without a little more detail offered in the abstract. There are interesting results that can replace this somewhat flippant phrase.
Response: Thanks for offering this critique. We have rewritten the abstract and replaced the previous phrasing with the following, “These findings suggest that adaptation responses, while influenced by experience, are mediated by age, attachment to place, and worldviews, and that these factors need to be accounted for when crafting adaptation strategies across coastal communities”.
Comment 3: Line 57-64. Text is very unclear and does not directly related to the study.
Response: Thank you for this comment. The text has been removed from the study.
Comment 4: Line 76. A very abrupt transition into the subject of this study. This should be the beginning of the article.
Response: Thank you for your comment. We have rearranged the introductory section so that the information about Florida is all in one section without any abrupt transitions. We will still introduce the paper with information about how SLR threatens Florida’s coasts since that is the topic of our paper.
Comment 5: Line 121-122. How exactly are these communities different? If this was a purposive sample of cases, explain the logic of case selection. A table might be useful.
Response: Yes, this sample was purposive. It was based on the local expertise of the researchers who wanted to identify three very different coastal communities on the Gulf Coast of Florida to conduct this research. Cedar Key represents a traditional fishing village that has survived many changes including a switch from mullet fishing to aquaculture, Fort Myers Beach is a newer type of community that used to be reliant on the fishing industry but is now being gentrified and moving into a more touristic economy, and Conch Key is a small fishing village that relies on lobster, crab, and finfish and is already experiencing impacts of SLR. We worked to clarify this information in the methods to show how our sample was purposive.
Comment 6: Formatting and empty spaces before the images needs to be addressed.
Response: Thanks for this comment. We have addressed this issue as much as possible.
Comment 7: Line 187. Maps are mislabeled. The first in the comparative maps is labeled “Projected Sea Level Rise in 2020”, don’t you mean “Contemporary sea levels”?
Response: Thank you for this comment and for carefully reading the figures. I have changed the figure to read “contemporary sea-levels” and have altered it so that it is more pleasing to the eye and clearer.
Comment 8: Figure 10 is the most interesting result. Those results should be mentioned in the abstract. The abstract should be rewritten to describe all the results better.
Response: Thank you for finding our results interesting! We have rewritten the abstract for clarity.
Comment 9: Citations appear to be incomplete
.
Response: We have gone through the citations and added what appeared to be missing. Zotero isn’t perfect. Thanks for checking on this!
Thank you for your review,
The Authors
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
I am writing this to submit my comments on your research article with the following details.
Manuscript title: Fishing Industry Perspectives on Sea-level Rise Risk and Adaptation
Manuscript Number: water-1144595
Journal Submitted: Water
Specific Comments:
Title:
The title is acceptable and represents the study.
Abstract:
The opening of the abstract should be more careful and based on the findings or essential information. I feel this can be shifted somewhere at the end of the abstract.
The authors need to provide more details on how they interacted with the people who participated in the survey.
The conclusions should be further strengthened.
Introduction:
L 32-33: If there is a general perception among the people about SLR, why are the migrating coastward?
L 34-36: What is the potential reason for this phenomenal increase in population?
L 62- 75: I do not see any link of this information with the main subject of this manuscript.
Please improve your study objectives.
Please move the L 111-116 to a place more suitable as they do not belong here.
Materials and Methods:
Please combine the study area maps into one figure.
Please reduce the study locations' description and keep only the most relevant as it makes it a local study.
Forty-four. Do you think this is enough to draw the conclusions? If yes, then why and how?
How about providing the questionnaire used during the survey?
Results:
L 312-316: Is this your own finding or coming from previous studies?
The rest is sufficient.
Discussion:
L 436-443: This is not the way to discuss. This appears to be an extension of the results section.
Overall, this is not the way to write discussions.
According to my evaluation, you seriously need to consider combining the results and discussions into one section. The initial paragraphs are an extension of the results, and the later are not so impressively written.
Please discuss your findings to cover the prevailing trends elsewhere and how this study could be used for policymaking and creating awareness among the coastal communities about the impending dangers of SLR.
Overall, the whole discussion section will be rewritten.
Figures and Tables:
Figure 4. Please enhance the size of the maps and the text is not readable inside the maps. Please try to remove the spaces between the maps.
Figure 5. Improve the figure quality and text size. Use black for the font.
Figure 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10. Same as for figure 5.
Please remove the borders of the figures created in MS Excel and make them in a way that looks more attractive and add value to your manuscript. In the present form, they look dull and do not catch the eye of the viewer.
Conclusions
L 551: Why have you cited this citation here, as apparently, it does not seem to justify here.
Please reduce the length and write a conclusive statement of your article as well.
How do you think this is applicable to the other parts of the US and the rest of the world?
References:
References are okay.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 3,
We wish to re-submit our original research article entitled, “Fishing Industry Perspectives on Sea-level Rise Risk and Adaptation,” for consideration by Water. We received many insightful comments from three reviewers and have revised the manuscript to address these comments At the bottom of this letter we outline the specific changes made based on your review. All of the changes have been completed in tracked changes. We believe this manuscript is appropriate for and would interest readers of Water, and we appreciate your review of our manuscript.
Abstract
Comment 0: The opening of the abstract should be more careful and based on the findings or essential information. I feel this can be shifted somewhere at the end of the abstract. The authors need to provide more details on how they interacted with the people who participated in the survey. The conclusions should be further strengthened.
Response: Thank you for this comment. We have rewritten the abstract and the conclusion per your suggestions.
Introduction:
Comment 1: L 32-33: If there is a general perception among the people about SLR, why are the migrating coastward?
Response: Thank you for this interesting question. People continue to move coastward for a multitude of reasons, namely, to enjoy the ecosystem services offered by our oceans. Another reason why urban expansion continues on Florida coasts is that realtors are often not required to inform property buyers of the flood risks posed by sea-level rise. While the factors which cause people to migrate coastward are fascinating, they are outside the scope of our paper.
Comment 2: L 34-36: What is the potential reason for this phenomenal increase in population?
Response: Thank you for your interest in Florida’s population growth. We think this is a really interesting question that is outside the scope of our study. Some reasons for population growth in Florida include low housing costs compared to elsewhere in the nation, warm weather, and beautiful beaches.
Comment 3: L 62- 75: I do not see any link of this information with the main subject of this manuscript.
Response: Thank you, we have addressed this comment by removing these lines from the manuscript.
Comment 4: Please improve your study objectives.
Response: We agree that the study objectives needed to be stated more clearly. We have written, “The goal of this study was to assess fishing industry perspectives of SLR risk and adaptation in the three Florida coastal communities, and the primary objective was to evaluate how community level factors, such as the types of fisheries, levels of resilience, and amount of SLR-related threat, influence views on adaptation,” at the end of the introduction.
Comment 5: Please move the L 111-116 to a place more suitable as they do not belong here.
Response: Thank you for this comment. These lines have been moved to the end of the discussion.
Materials and Methods:
Comment 6: Please combine the study area maps into one figure.
Response: Thank you for this comment. We understand why one figure showing each study area would be nice, but there is a lot of detail in each map that we would lose if we did this. We have decided to keep the study area maps separately for this reason.
Comment 7: Please reduce the study locations' description and keep only the most relevant as it makes it a local study.
Response: We believe that the provided descriptions of each area are relevant to the findings and what drives the views of the respondents. Given your comment, I re-read each location description and cut any lines I did not feel were relevant.
Comment 8: Forty-four. Do you think this is enough to draw the conclusions? If yes, then why and how?
Response: Thank you for this comment. Studies in social science often have small sample sizes for various reasons (unless they are larger demographic or epidemiological studies). In our case, this research was a census study and everyone in the fishing industry in each area who could be contacted, was contacted. In the paper we write, “These totals represent a census sample of the fishing industry, in that all fishery stakeholders who had physical presence in the community (i.e., an identifiable local business operation such as a fish house, charter fishing operation, commercial fishing vessel, etc.), self-identified as being a community member, and was either an owner or manager of a fishery business operation.” We hope that this addresses your comment.
Comment 9: How about providing the questionnaire used during the survey?
Response: Thank you for this comment, the questionnaire used during the interviews will be included in the appendix.
Results:
Comment 10: L 312-316: Is this your own finding or coming from previous studies?
Response: In Lines 312-316 we wrote, “Interviews revealed that there is a high level of trust and cooperation among the commercial fishers in Conch Key and most of the fishers sell primarily to one fish house located on the island; the repeated interactions have likely reduced transaction costs, promoting bonding social capital as identified in other, resource-dependent communities [45,46].” The finding from our study is that there is a high level of trust and cooperation among the commercial fishers in Conch Key. That this trust can contribute to reduced transaction costs and increased social capital in resource-dependent communities is from previous studies. In order to increase clarity we have split this section into two separate sentences.
Discussion:
Comment 11: L 436-443: This is not the way to discuss. This appears to be an extension of the results section. Overall, this is not the way to write discussions. According to my evaluation, you seriously need to consider combining the results and discussions into one section. The initial paragraphs are an extension of the results, and the later are not so impressively written. Please discuss your findings to cover the prevailing trends elsewhere and how this study could be used for policymaking and creating awareness among the coastal communities about the impending dangers of SLR. Overall, the whole discussion section will be rewritten.
Response: We have taken this comment into account and rewritten the discussion section. The results which were previously in this section have been moved to the results section. While the discussion and results sections are still separate, we hope our changes have addressed your concerns.
Figures and Tables:
Comment 12: Figure 4. Please enhance the size of the maps and the text is not readable inside the maps. Please try to remove the spaces between the maps.
Response: Thank you for this comment. Figure 4 has been reorganized for clarity and aesthetics. The maps are the exact same that were shown to participants in the study and the text within the maps says: Source: Esri DigitalGlobe. It is an automatic watermark that comes with all Arc GIS maps and is not relevant to the study.
Comment 13: Figure 5. Improve the figure quality and text size. Use black for the font. Figure 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10. Same as for figure 5.
Response: Thank you for paying close attention to the figures. I have worked to improve the figure quality and text size/color.
Comment 14: Please remove the borders of the figures created in MS Excel and make them in a way that looks more attractive and add value to your manuscript. In the present form, they look dull and do not catch the eye of the viewer.
Response: Thank you for this guidance. The figures have been remade. We hope this addresses your comment but are open to any suggestions for improvement.
Conclusions
Comment 15: L 551: Why have you cited this citation here, as apparently, it does not seem to justify here.
Response: We have added this citation here because it is an example of how resilience is measured in terms of socio-ecological indicators denoting resistance to ecological and anthropogenic stressors in the Gulf of Mexico.
Comment 16: Please reduce the length and write a conclusive statement of your article as well.
Response: Thank you for this comment. We have rewritten the conclusion and shortened the length of our manuscript.
Comment 17: How do you think this is applicable to the other parts of the US and the rest of the world?
Response: The study findings demonstrate that factors influencing stakeholder views on SLR are complex and interrelated, and that communities which may appear superficially homogeneous, whether those are in Florida or the rest of the globe, are in fact diverse and thus may not respond to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ adaptation approach. This information has been added to our rewritten conclusion.
Thank you for your review,
The Authors
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Revisions are adequate
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have made significant improvements in the manuscript. I think it can be accepted in the current form.
