Dear Dr. Acevedo-Trejos and co-authors,

Thank you for your responses to the referees and your revised manuscript. I have now reviewed these and am pleased to report that I am satisfied that you have addressed the referees’ concerns.

In reading through your revised manuscript, I noted several minor errors in the text added to the manuscript:

- Line 115: “versions” should be “version”
- Line 204: correct to “… from adjacent areas are characterised …”
- Line 369-370: amend to “A trait-based description of zooplankton can help in reducing model complexity …”
- Line 447: “my” should be “by”
- Figure 1: I believe einsteins are abbreviated as “E” not “Ein”; also, mol photons are often preferred to einsteins
- Figure 1: both leftmost panels are rather murky (e.g. coastlines are far less distinct than in the rightmost panels) – has something gone wrong?

Also, in the new text around trait-based zooplankton mentioned above (lines 369-376), there could be a little more clarity around why the trait-based approach “reduces complexity”. Perhaps a bracketed remark along the lines of “(i.e. adds size-related functionality without the need for discretely parameterised zooplankton classes)” could be added to the end of the sentence on line 376. Might that help?

I would be grateful if you could amend these minor points. Thanks again for your efforts, and for dealing so completely and clearly with the referee concerns.

Andrew Yool.