FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 80, NO. 3 



Table 1. — Summary of data collected for English sole, Parophrys vetulus; butter sole, Isopsetta isolepis; speckled sanddab, 

 are the number of fish out of the total examined which had empty guts. The two values listed for each prey category are average 



tion of the meiofaunal cores revealed that all the 

 organisms classified as "benthic" occurred in the 

 upper 1 cm of sediment. Prey items which were 

 never found in benthic samples were defined as 

 "pelagic" and consisted of mysids (mainly Neo- 

 mysis kadiakensis), calanoid copepods (Pseudo- 

 calanus sp.), and veliger larvae. This distinction 

 between benthic and pelagic organisms is some- 

 what arbitrary, since some of these species are 

 mobile epibenthic forms which probably occur 

 both in the sediments and the overlying water. 

 Adequacy of the sample sizes used in deter- 

 mining food habits of the flatfish species was 

 assessed using several techniques. The guts of 16 

 Parophrys vetulus (19-48 mm SL) and 16 /. iso- 



lepis (19-33 mm SL) were examined from each of 

 two tows. These two species were selected be- 

 cause they fed on a much broader spectrum of 

 prey than Citharichthys stigmaeus or Psettiehthys 

 melanostictus and hence are subject to greater 

 sampling error. The cumulative number of prey 

 categories encountered, expressed as a function 

 of sample size, is shown in Figure 2. For both 

 English sole and butter sole, after seven or eight 

 fish had been examined, no new food categories 

 were found. After examining only four fish, 75% 

 of all food items had been collected. This qualita- 

 tive consistency among guts is also reflected in 

 the high frequency of occurrence (Table 1) for 

 most prey. Quantitatively, the composition of gut 



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