That's driving boat prices up to where it's impossible to make money. The largest club store chain on the West Coast, for example, stopped selling fresh halibut this August. This year, we'll be lucky to do 200,000 pounds. Most retailers have reached their breaking point. 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.