Dear Clare and Co-Workers,

thank you for submitting your responses. You have two minor and one major revision suggestion from your reviewers. The comments from the major revision suggestion are not extensive and it seems you will be able to address them adequately. I therefore decided to go with minor revisions (editor review).

A few comments regarding your revision:
- Reporting your data per square meter (m2) is ok for me. I do the same even though we know there is heterogeneity. It has become a standard. But please add a note to your interpretations that there is uncertainty when scaling up these numbers.
- Please remove mean from two replicates as suggested and report individual data instead where applicable.
- Please provide a thoughtful discussion on the limitation of your ex-situ measurements. Again, I feel for you - have been working with ex-situ seep sediments forever. It is sufficient if you highlight that we don't know if the data would look different if they were measured in situ. This is as good as it gets for now.
- Provide the requested details to the methods.

When you upload your manuscript add a version with all changes highlighted. It will help me to get through your file quickly.

With kind regards
Tina

Dear Clara Woulds et al.,

I noticed that in Fig. 7 and 8 a column for Hook Ridge B is missing. Was this non detectable or are data just missing? Should be stated in the figure caption.

Best
Tina