First of the Season Fresh Alaskan Halibut!

We want to thank you for providing us with your email address to participate in our newsletter! This is the very first of (hopefully!) many to come. We're still rolling with training wheels at this point so we hope you'll ride along as we learn. It's our sincere hope to provide everyone with valuable information in a fun, local format. March 7th marks the season opening for one of our favorites, wild Alaskan halibut! Often considered the world's premium whitefish, wild halibut is harvested and flown in fresh from March through November. At Olympia Seafood, we generally offer halibut in the size range of 20 to 60 pounds, (somewhere between 6 and 20ish years old), but it's interesting to note that halibut are the largest of all flatfish. The state record for Alaska clocks in at 459 pounds (1996) which makes our shop record of 128 pounds sound pretty tiny! All halibut are longline caught through an excellent management program that utilizes the "individual fisherman's quota" method of commercial fishing. IFQ means that each fisherman gets a set amount of halibut to catch each season, as opposed to other management models that allow a single quota for the entire fleet. The halibut management system is good for the consumer in that, weather depending, there is almost always a steady supply of fresh halibut during the open season months. Halibut is a lean, mild and relatively solid whitefish which is sold at Olympia Seafood as a completely boneless fish. It rates as a "best choice" on the seafoodwatch.org sustainability and contaminant charts and usually retails between $14 and $17 per pound. We're always happy to cut or skin your halibut selection based on your cooking method, so feel free to ask! We recommend around 5 to 7 ounces per adult serving. We welcome your comments and suggestions via our shop email address olympiaseafood@gmail.com and please feel free to forward this to anyone who might enjoy it! If you're a Twitter user, follow us @olympiaseafood and be on the lookout for our new website soon. Sincerely, Kira, Tony and Sailor DeRito, Maggie and Justin - the fish shop team!