The authors have done a good job addressing many of the comments of both reviewers.

The authors have sufficiently addressed the major comments of the reviewers. One remaining issue, and the reason I determined "Publish subject to minor revision", is the format of Table 3. The table seems quite important, as it is cited in the main text multiple times in support of statements of results. The present format of Table 3 makes it too difficult to understand and too difficult to find the specific values that support each results statement in the text. Perhaps breaking the table into multiple, smaller tables would be enough? Maybe extracting and summarizing the detailed data to highlight the key results in a new table or figure, and putting the individual cruise information in supplemental? Table 3 needs to be revised so that it is more readable and so that readers can more easily follow how the data in the table supports the results stated in the text. What I offered above are illustrative examples of changes to Table 3; I will leave the exact modifications to the authors.

Please see comments by the editor.

The splitting of the too-large Table 3 into two tables (now Tables 3 and 4) is a reasonable approach for reducing the length and complexity of the original Table 3. However, the text needs additional updating to reflect that there are now two tables and the text should provide more guidance to the reader where to find the specific information in the Tables that are cited to support the more general statements in the results. For clarity, I extracted two examples where additional citing in the text of numbers that appear in tables and where the citing of a table seems to be missing.

Example 1: E. inermis diapausing layers were located at extremely low oxygen, 1.0-5.7 µM (except for the shallow layer at TB in 2008 where the net probably sampled across zones) (Table 3).

I think you need to also refer to Table 4 so the reader knows why you cite 1.0-5.7 uM.

Example 2: Oxygen where M. brevicauda was most abundant was 1.0-5.7 µM with a temperature of 10.0 – 10.8°C (Table 3) in the UO of CRD in 2007 (300-350 m, maximum adult abundance in this net of 15,958 (1000 m)-3 ), ...

I believe the maximum abundance is in Table 4, but Table 4 is not cited in this example.

I suggest you go through the results that rely on Tables 3 and 4, and expand the text a bit to cite the numbers in the Tables (or specific rows with columns) as the values are used to support statements in the text. Basically, please modify and add to the text information that carefully leads the reader through the use of Tables 3 and 4. This does not affect your results but rather makes it easy for the reader to understand the basis of the results statements.

Dear Karen Wishner,
The revised version of your work has been analyzed by Kenneth Rose, the handling associate editor. He recommends minor revisions and provides recommendations that need to be taken into account before your manuscript can be accepted for publication in Biogeosciences.
Thank you so much for taking these comments into consideration,

Kind regards,
Marilaure Grégoire

The revisions are sufficient for recommendation of publication.

Please see comments by the handling editor.

And thank you for supporting open-access publications like Biogeosciences.