Fraser River sockeye salmon: data synthesis and cumulative impacts

series, B-series, etc. to clarify that these bullets are what the text is referring to. We havenow embedded statistical models explicitly in the ‘model structure’ section.41. Even Table A3.5-1 adds to the confusion given the (perhaps mis-formatted) headingof "Model [spaces] set" with "group" below it. That table requires a more extensivecaption to explain the symbols. For instance, what is "w/in Inc-Lak" on row D? What do"yes" and "no" mean and how does the latter differ from "N/A"? The entries in this tableare also formatted poorly.Response: We have reformatted the table to avoid the awkward gaps. In addition we havereplaced the short hand in the tables with expanded text. We have also updated the tablecaption to clarify what yes/no indicate in the table.42. "Timeseries", "lifehistory" (and "lifestages" and "broodyears" elsewhere) shouldeach be split into two words, and "principle components" should read "principalcomponents". I will not mention any more of these basic spelling errors; they should allbe fixed with a thorough editing.Response: These terms have been split into two words throughout the document. Theexception is cases where “BroodYear” is used to name the field in the database thatcontains data on the brood year. The misspelling of “principal components” has beencorrected.43. Page 146 - Was the following step applied to data sets for all predators and allalternative prey? "...we took each dataset individually and generated a new quantilebased dataset..."Response: No, it was not applied to the marine mammal data. We have added a table toAppendix 3 that describes each of the predator/alternative prey data sets we received alongwith: the hypothesized effect on sockeye (mechanism and life stage), and a description ofthe data reduction if it occurred.44. In the "Model structure" section, you have to provide some example equations(including the assumed error structure) for technically-trained readers to clarify whatexactly you are doing. This lack of information is really frustrating. The equations are notclear, contrary to what you say here: "Table A3.5-2 illustrates the process we used todocument the model structure for each model set".Response: We have added an equation to the model structure section to explicitly illustratewhat models we fit. We have also expanded the heading for Table A3.5-2 to clarify how toread the candidate models from this table.45. The second column heading in Table A3.5-2 should read "Independent variable".The caption for this table is quite inadequate. What do the 0s and 1s in the columns M1through M10 indicate? I use mixed-effects models myself, so I would assume that they132