Dear Authors,
I refer to your manuscript bg-2018-57 submitted for publication to Biogeosciences. While the three referees agree that you have collected a valuable data set and that the scientific significance is good to excellent, they identified critical issues. Scientific quality was found to be fair by all referees and two of them also found the presentation quality fair. Hence, there is a need for a major revision.
Please revise the manuscript along the line of your reply to the referees. Note that you have not addressed all the issues which were raised (flow, light, title). I strongly recommend that you thoroughly consider all comments and provide convincing replies because a revised manuscript would be sent again to the two most critical referees for a second round of review.

Best regards,
Jean-Pierre Gattuso
BG Editor

PS: I disagree with referee #2 about the comment s/he made on line 46 of your manuscript. To me, cold water coral communities are not coral reefs and I mostly agree with your statement. To account for reefs which grow in subtropical, marginal environments, you could perhaps revise the sentence slightly as "Coral reef growth is *mostly* limited to warm, aragonite-saturated, and oligotrophic tropical oceans".

Dear Author,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript submitted to Biogeosciences, which can be accepted for publication after minor revision. Please address the suggestions provided by the reviewers. When submitting the revised version, please let me know which of the changes were not implemented, if any, and why. This will speed up final acceptance.

I look forward to seeing this paper published and thank you for considering Biogeosciences to publish these very interesting results.

Best regards,
Jean-Pierre Gattuso

Dear Author,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript submitted to Biogeosciences, which I am glad to accept for publication.

I look forward to seeing this paper published and thank you for considering Biogeosciences to publish these very interesting results.

Best regards,
Jean-Pierre Gattuso
BG Editor