Parker et al .: Diet of Caretta caretta in the central North Pacific 



145 



the following order: 1) Carinaria eithara, 2) Pyrosoma 

 spp., 3) Janthina spp., 4) Velella velella, 5) Lepas spp., 

 and 6) Planes spp. 



Mean sample volume was 370.2 [±319.4] mL. Size of 

 loggerhead sea turtles did not influence the volume of 

 prey items for turtle sizes 35-70+ cm (F=0.11, r 2 =0.05). 

 However, the smaller turtles did have smaller volumes 

 of prey items present in their stomachs, because all 

 turtles 13-34 cm had less than 80 mL total stomach 

 volume (Fig. 4). The size of the turtle did not appear to 

 be a factor in the type of prey ingested. The one excep- 

 tion may be Velella velella. Turtles smaller than 30 cm 

 CCL in our sample did not ingest this prey item, albeit 

 sample size for less than 30-cm turtles was relatively 

 small compared to the number of 40- and 50-cm size 

 class turtles (Fig. 2); therefore, this apparent trend may 

 not be the case for the general population. 



Of the six most common prey items, Carinaria ei- 

 thara had the highest percent sample volume, 43.8% 

 of total sample volume. In general, percent volumes 

 of C. eithara were high; 20 of the 27 turtle stomachs 



had percent volumes greater than 30% with this prey 

 item and a number of stomachs had percent volumes 

 greater than 90%. Janthina spp. had the next highest 



