Halibut

Hello once again people.

So I had a nice surprise yesterday/today. I got a call yesterday about an interview at Whole Foods to be one of their seafood team members. I became excited, because if there is a place I would want to work at with seafood, it would be Whole Foods, because they are very focused on sustainable seafood. This is very important because seafood is tasty, and as such tends to be over-exploited. I had the interview today, and I'm having another interview on Thursday.

The interview went very well today. I talked about how I liked salmon and about how passionate I am about sustainable fishing and harvesting practices, learned that they smoke their fish in house (so I'll probably learn how to do that if I get this job).

But I didn't write this post just to talk about my interview. While walking in I noticed that they had a sale on halibut. This post is going to be about this flatfish.

Halibut is a right-eyed flounder, which means that it's face is on the right side of its head. It consists of several species, some who are officially named halibut (Atlantic halibut, Pacific halibut, spotted halibut) and some named flounder (California flounder, olive flounder, etc.). Their name comes from their popularity as food for Catholic holy days, 'hali' coming from 'holy' and 'but' coming from 'butt', not just the posterior but the meaning as 'a flatfish.' They can get real big, the record (awaiting confirmation) being 515 pounds and 9 feet long. That's a big fish.

As flatfish, you wouldn't expect them to be near the top of the food chain in their habitats, but they are. They eat pretty much anything they can fit in their mouth, and their predators are such beasts as sea lions, killer whales, and salmon sharks.

Halibut are popular for eating because they have a nice but not overpowering flavor, are dense and moist, and you can get four fillets out of one fish. They are so popular that the Atlantic halibut is being considered as a candidate for an endangered species listing, due to overfishing.

Atlantic Halibut, Hippoglossus hippoglossus