Dear Dr. Kaiser, dear Jan, and co-authors,

Thank you for the resubmission of your technical note.
I am satisfied with your response to the referees and am accepting the manuscript for publication in Ocean Science.

I have only two comments, please consider these when submitting the final version of your manuscript.

L20 The term „plankton net community production”, although being in use, sounds kind of strange to me. The “community” in this term comprises more than plankton, right? Then I would prefer the term “net community production”, without the prefix plankton. But it is up to you to change it or not.

L244 months


A few words are appropriate about the acceptance of your manuscript, the more so as the two referees did advise not to publish your paper:
Even if the result is not completely satisfying as to the future use of BAC as a preservative, I think this is still very important information to the scientific community. There is a general problem of not publishing "negative" results, which leads to a lot of research being doubled. This technical note is kind of in the same category - although not completely, as BAC is useful for short-time preservation. And you made very clear that BAC should not be considered as a full alternative for HgCl2.

Best wishes
Mario Hoppema