They won't put it on ad anymore. Stores still have to carry it, but the volume is down and margins are down. It's really ho-hum. Nobody's doing the business they used to. Sales of frozen halibut steaks, once a staple of broadline foodservice distributors, have also declined as halibut prices itself out of more and more applications.
Chefs have to have fresh halibut on the menu.
It used to be just on the West Coast. Then it was Boston, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. Now it's Paris and London, too. The quota for this year's Pacific halibut season, which runs from March 15 to Nov. 15, is 66.6 million pounds, a 10-percent decline from last year's catch of 74.6 million pounds, the highest in 10 years. About 8 million pounds of the quota will be landed by Canadian boats, with almost all the rest coming from Alaska.