Dear Hannah Bourne,

Thank you very much for responding to the reviewers' comments carefully. It appears that your responses are fairly reasonable. So we would appreciate it very much if you could send us the latest version of your manuscript. Once we receive the manuscript from you, I will ask one of the referees to evaluate your revised manuscript soon.

Again thank you for your nice effort to improve the manuscript.

Best regards,

Koji Suzuki
Associate Editor

Dear Hannah L. Bourne,

Please read the following review from one of the previous referees and make a further revised manuscript.

Thank you very much for your nice effort to improve the manuscript.

Kind regards,

Koji Suzuki
Associate Editor

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Authors addressed respective comments from reviewers appropriately. I think this manuscript has now been improved very well and has become reader-friendly, especially by adding detail explanation of Fig.6 (comparison of VAF:POC relation) in section 3.4 and adding Fig. A4 (CFE-Cal configuration).
I’d like to recommend to accept this manuscript to BG after following minor revision.

Page 1 Line 19 (P1L19) Need definition of VAF
P3L7 Add parenthesis “(“ before “as”
P3LL27 Add “, Fig. A4” after “Fig. 1a”
P9L27 Add “less than 3 mm” after “ovoid pellets”
*Please describe size of counted ovoid pellets (< 3 mm OK? What is minimum size?)

Fig. A4 How about adding some explanation (caption or label) on figure?
(e.g. Sediment trap funnel, Glass sample stage, Major dimension, Planetary gear motor…)

Dear Dr. Bourne,

It is a great pleasure now to accept your manuscript for publication in Biogeosciences. Before it is published from the journal, please consider my technical corrections below.

P1, L14: 18–24-hour. Please use an en dash for the time period.
P2, L17: 1–2 days. This is the same as above.
P3, L16: (Bishop et al., 2016)
P5, L17: McDonnell et al., 2015
P7, L23: 12 M HCl
P8, L16: Remove the space between > and 1.5.
P9, L8: Table S1
P9, L18: 8.9×. Please use the mathematical symbol “×”, not alphabet “x”.
P9, L23: Fig. A5
P9, L27: 200–300. Use an en dash.
P10, L14: Remove the space between < and 2.
P10, L22: 5–14. This is also the same as above.
P10, L19; P11, L1, P11, L23: Please use the mathematical symbol “×”. Also remove the spaces put immediately before and after the symbol “×”.
P12, L10: 500 m
P12, L19: Bishop et al. (1978)
P12, L32: the factor of 2.8 by Bishop et al. (2016).
P13, L2: Bishop et al. (1978)
P14, L1: 150 m.
P14, L19: We would also
P14, L27: 1131–1140
P14, L29: 45(4–5), 529–541
P15, L5: 511–548
P15, L7: 17(1–2), 1–59
P15, L7: 1–59
P16, L8: 212–224
P16, L17: 200–206
P16, L24: 601–638
P16, L28: 1540–1563
P29, L4: Bishop et al. (2016)
P30, L2; P32, L1: 1–4
Labels for the unit of VA in Tables S1 and S2: Use a superscript for “2” in cm2.

Thank you very much again for submitting your nice paper to the journal Biogeosciences.

Kind regards,

Koji Suzuki
Associate Editor