Halibut

Family Pleuronectidae

• French: Flétan
• Dutch: Heilbot
• German: Heilbutt
• Polish: Halibut, Kulbak
• Russian: Pałtus
• Swedish: Hälleflundra
• Norwegian: Kveite
• Danish: Helleflynder
• Icelandic: Lúða, Flyðra, Heilagfiski

REMARKS The maximum length of this great fish is 2½ metres and it may weigh over 300 kilos. Although such measurements are quite exceptional, the halibut is by far the greatest of the flatfish. Its back is dark olive-green, the blind side pearly white.

The halibut is a northern fish, not common south of Scotland or below New Jersey. It is a deep-water fish and is sometimes taken by trawlers fishing for cod in Arctic waters, but the directed fishery for it, by line or trawl, is a specialized business. The drawing on the next page shows the crew of a small dory from a halibut schooner ‘hauling the trawl, gaffing and clubbing the halibut’, some eighty years ago. This was no easy task, since the halibut has enormous vitality and is a strong fighter. In his autobiography Roving Fisherman, the Canadian author F. W. Wallace wrote: ‘It will spin around like a whirling top, thereby making the job of giving him his quietus with the “killer” an exceedingly difficult one. For perhaps a minute or two, there is spray and profanity flying, punctuated by dull thuds of the club on the halibut’s snout . . .’ He had seen men’s wrists broken in such a mêlée.