Taste for Halibut keeps on growing in Victoria

Cristy Goodfellow pack a tasty-looking 11-kilo chunk of fresh halibut into Finest at Sea's Erie Street store Monday

Cristy Goodfellow packs a tasty looking 11-kilo chunk of fresh halibut into Finest at Sea's Erie Street store Monday

CREDIT: Bruce Stotesbury, Times Colonist

It used to be that salmon got all the glory. Now, halibut is becoming increasingly popular among diners and supermarket shoppers.

Halibut is making a move onto B.C. dinner plates as consumers eat more seafood and get caught up in the excitement of the start of this year's fishing season for the flat, diamond-shaped fish.

At Old British Fish and Chips on Pandora Avenue, halibut is edging out cod in popularity, even though it costs almost a dollar more per piece. Halibut fans like its mild flavour, says manager Henry Thom.

At Pescatore's Fish House on Humboldt Street, halibut has been among the restaurant's top-selling dishes for a couple of years now, owner Mike Murphy said Monday.

"It's such an easy sell. No one is ever going to be disappointed having halibut ... It has been growing and growing and growing.

Halibut plays a major role in B.C.'s fisheries, both commercial and recreational. It had a landed value of close to $39.4 million in B.C. in 2002.

This year's halibut season runs from Feb. 29 to Nov. 15. Commercial fishermen have an allocation of 12.14 million pounds this year, up from 11.75 in 2003. Fisheries and Oceans Canada is projecting recreational fishermen will catch about 1.25 million pounds. Another 409,000 pounds of potential catch has not been allocated yet, Allan Macdonald, fisheries department resource manager for the Pacific region, said from Vancouver.

The issue of division of the resource is contentious among the fishing industry and a permanent formula has yet to be worked out.

More than 200 fishing vessels are expected to go after halibut this year. A large halibut can weigh 475 pounds and catches of more than 300 pounds are not uncommon in Alaska. But more typically, commercial fishermen in the Strait of Juan de Fuca pull in fish weighing from 20 to 40 pounds and the average recreational catch is about 20 pounds, he said.

Halibut catch

Shane King, general manager of Albion Fisheries Victoria, which holds about 80 per cent of the market share of halibut sales to restaurants and retailers on Vancouver Island, has also seen the demand for halibut increase in recent years.

Halibut sales are surging ahead of last year. Sales are 100 per cent higher to date this year than last, King said. "It is becoming more and more popular on Vancouver Island."

King attributes rising sales to consumer interest in healthy eating and to a campaign by Island grocery giant Thrifty Foods to sell freshly caught halibut from FAS (Finest at Sea) Seafood Producers on Erie Street, headed by Bob Fraumeni. The advertising blitz kicked off a "halibut frenzy," he said.

Albion distributes FAS halibut, caught off the Queen Charlotte Islands, to Thrifty Foods exclusively.

Thrifty Foods launched the season with a sale price of 95 cents per 100 grams. Customers lined up at fish counters. "It was nuts," said Alex Campbell Jr., of Thrifty Foods. Over the 10 days of the promotion, Thrifty Foods sold two to three times as much halibut as it had in the past and seafood sales overall were up 10 per cent, he said. "Seafood sales continue to just rock along."

Campbell received telephone calls from people he hadn't seen in years, saying they were having halibut that night.

On Monday, Thrifty Foods was selling halibut steaks for $1.28 per 100 grams.

That halibut was caught by the 50-foot-long FV Nopsa off the Queen Charlottes, where the weather has been "bad and worse," said Paul Chaddock, FAS sales manager. The vessel ties up at Masset when the weather is rough and heads out when it quiets down.

"It has been, on average, probably blowing 35 to 45 knots for the last couple of weeks," Chaddock said. A crew of six spends two to three days fishing with the longliner before delivering its catch to Prince Rupert where it is loaded into trucks and shipped south.

The Nordic Rand, another FAS vessel, is on its way to fish for halibut off Port Hardy. FAS expects to catch about 650,000 pounds of halibut this season.

FAS sells halibut out of Vancouver to wholesalers, at its own James Bay retail store, and to high-end restaurants. Thrifty Foods is the only supermarket it supplies. It also catches and sells other seafood products, including sablefish.

The company aims for a top-quality product. Halibut is cleaned carefully, packed in layers of ice and kept at a low temperature after being caught, Chaddock said. "We've got people just scrambling to get our fish."