There also has been an increase in
the number and diversity of items ingested. Hughes (1970, 1974a) implied
turtles contained relatively few plastic items,
and that industrial
pellets were the items most frequently ingested,
whereas our animals
averaged close to 10 items per turtle, and pellets were greatly
outnumbered by hard plastic fragments,
flexible plastics and fibres.
The change in plastic composition mirrors decreases in pellets ingested
by seabirds in this region since the 1980s (Ryan, 2008),