why did the halibut cross the ocean? to see his flatmates

In a shocking and shameful dereliction of duty and a betrayal of everything that this blog stands for, I note that we have only done one halibut-related post in the last FIVE FREAKIN' YEARS, and that one was really just a passing mention before my attention wandered onto the subject of Katy Perry's tits. Oh sure, there's been Halibut Towers this and The Curse Of Electric Halibut that, but that butters no parsnips compared to raw unadorned data about large flatfish of the genus Hippoglossus.

The previous proper halibut post from October 2012 was mainly concerned with the catching of a whopping 186-kilogram specimen off the coast of Norway (as you'll see from the following stories, Norway is pretty much Halibutsville Central when it comes to big ones). In similar vein, today's Daily Mail carries a story about a British fisherman landing the "world's biggest ever halibut" while on a fishing trip to, you've guessed it, Norway. So what you'll be thinking is: wow, I wonder how big that was - the 2012 one made no claim to be a record-breaker but this one must be bigger than that, at the very least. So you'd perhaps be surprised to learn that this one weighed in at a mere 153 pounds, which is a fraction under 70 kilograms. It turns out that this is one of those records where you have to read the small print carefully - it's the biggest "shore-caught" halibut on record, the other monster ones being presumably landed onto boats.

Undeterred by this the fisherman carried out one of the primary obligations of the halibut-wrangler, which is to lie down next to the fish and pose for the photo. The canonical measure of halibut size (in contrast to giant squid size, where the standard London bus is used) from the selection of things deemed to be understandable by Joe Public, who has literally no idea how much a kilogram weighs, is some hand-wavey estimate of how many human-meal-sized portions it would yield. You'll recall my scepticism about the number quoted for the 186kg specimen - the claim made here is as follows:

The fish made 160 fillets, which would be worth around £4,000 to a high end fish restaurant

Two obvious thoughts: firstly that is under a sixth of the number of portions claimed for the 186kg halibut, a fish a little over two-and-a-half times as large. Since I found the original estimate implausible, maybe that's OK, though. But, secondly, if you do the price calculation, 160 portions fetching £4000 works out at 25 quid a portion. Can that be right? Well, Waitrose charge £28.99 a kilo for halibut, which works out at between £5 and £7 for a fairly normal-sized portion. Maybe "high end" restaurants (whose suppliers won't be charging as much as Waitrose, don't forget) really do apply that much of a mark-up.

Anyway, the proper world record for catching a halibut, no ifs, buts, maybes or nonsense about having to be standing on the shore, on a Tuesday, wearing a woolly hat and blue underpants, is a gargantuan 233kg specimen (although the Daily Mail, as is their wont, stick bloody-mindedly to various forms of imperial measurement throughout) caught by German fisherman Marco Liebenow back in 2013. "Heavier than a wild gorilla", apparently. A wild one, mind. Wild? I was absolutely livid, etc.

be selective, be objective, be an asset to the collective

Couple of brief follow-ups regarding earlier stuff:

Firstly, halibut news. Doug is a man whose expertise on matters zoological I trust implicitly, so when he told me the other day that I should go and Google "olive flounder" I immediately went and did so, with only the smallest amount of suspicion that I was being pranked and that it would turn out to be some eye-watering sex act that cannot be described on a family blog. With pictures. But, mercifully, it turns out the olive flounder really is a thing, relevant to this blog because it's also apparently colloquially known as the "bastard halibut". I see no evidence for this particular flatfish being any more unpleasant, obnoxious or untrustworthy than any other, so I assume the "bastard" bit refers to its not really being a proper halibut. Getting your Paralichthyidae mixed up with your Pleuronectidae is social death where I come from. Nonetheless, I like olives, and my swimming style is best described by the word "flounder" (or, if you catch me a few minutes later, the word "drown").

Secondly, a quick update on my wildly ambitious project to catalogue the full lexicon of Daily Mail euphemisms. Anyone who follows me on Twitter (and why wouldn't you?) will have seen my occasional flagging of Mail stories with the #assetbingo hashtag - the rule being the word "assets" has to be in the main headline, and it has to unambiguously refer to tits, ideally with the word "flaunting" in there somewhere as well.

"Quite the handful! Katy Perry showcases her assets in plunging black gown" https://t.co/aJs7JjMtvT #DailyMail #assetbingo

— Dave Thomas (@electrichalibut) November 25, 2015

flaunting summary: ample assets (see below), slender curves, ample cleavage, cleavage, toned legs. #DailyMail

— Dave Thomas (@electrichalibut) October 28, 2015

A sighting of "assets" used to describe a bodily attribute other than tits is a rare beast indeed - here's one from a couple of days ago in a bit of a non-story about a woman with fairly long legs (these being the assets in question).

Rest assured women are still "pouring their curves" into things as well: recent examples can be found here, here and here.

you're going to need a bigger boat

We haven't done a halibut-related post for a while, so here is the news for halibuts:

• No halibuts were involved today when an Afghan policeman opened fire on British troops at a checkpoint. A spokesman for halibuts expressed his relief that no halibuts were involved. 
• One halibut was, however, involved in a tragic trawling incident which resulted in him being, erm, trawled. And then cut up and eaten. This is just the latest in a series of giant halibut stories including this one from 2008 (as previously featured on this blog) but also this one from 2009, this one from 2010 and this one from 2011 (this is the fish in the picture - it's the one on the right without the wellies).

A couple of questions arise from that second story, actually - firstly there's the claim that the fish yielded "more than 1,000 portions". That seems like a lot, even from a fish weighing almost exactly twice as much as I do at 186kg (that's a touch over 29 stone in old money). Let's take a look at the maths - I'd say a single portion of fish, if you're not going to be too stingy about it, weighs between 150 and 180 grams. It might even be more if you're inclined to generous portions, but that'll do. Now, a thousand 180g portions of fish (or indeed lead, feathers or anything else) weighs 180kg, which leaves precious little room for throwing anything away, in fact it would mean that all the accumulated guts, eyes, bones, fins and bits of skin weighed a mere 6kg, i.e. a frankly implausible 3.2% of the fish. Even the frugal 150g portion only leaves 36kg of wastage, which at 19.4% of the original fish still seems a touch on the low side to me. And they said over 1,000 portions, remember. I'm not sure I buy it. Or rather I'm not sure I would buy it, if a restaurant offered me 0.1% of the edible portion of a 186kg fish, as I strongly suspect that would be rather a small meal. As a comparison the 2010 story linked above reckons the 220kg fish snagged there would have yielded 970 portions, which if we assume the same portion size range yields a wastage ratio of between 21% and 34%.

Secondly, what is the plural of halibut? I've used "halibuts" in the first couple of paragraphs above, largely for comic effect, but actually I think "halibut" sounds more sensible. I think there may be a rule here, as I can't think of a fish where the plural form sounds sensible compared to just re-using the singular. One cod, two cod, three haddock, five salmon, twelve hake, eighty-six mackerel, four trillion goldfish, and so on. The last one there may hold the key to the mystery - does this rule apply because "fish" is its own plural, and all sub-divisions of the "fish" category therefore inherit their pluralisation rules from it?

Lastly, do not diss the halibut, whether singular or plural. Even a singular one, if it's big enough, can fuck you up pretty good. So watch yourself.

well burger me

As for food, most of the time we were cooking our own, but there were a few exceptions. I've already mentioned Villa Caruso in Jasper, but while in Vancouver at the start of the trip we went to a couple of contrasting tapas bars, both good in their own way.

La Bodega is quite traditional, and none the worse for that, although we were a bit jet-lagged and knackered when we went there (I had to keep kicking Hazel under the table to wake her up), so I'm not sure we really appreciated it fully.

By contrast Bin 941 is what you might call a modern and funky twist on the same thing - the picture is of a small brick of houmous with some olives on top. It's far from a triumph of style over substance, though, the food was delicious.

We also had a steamed burrito from Steamrollers - nice enough, though I must say I'm not sure about the whole steaming concept, as it means the burrito ends up a bit soft and soggy. You want a bit of bite, really.

Finally, the big public market on Granville Island is a food-lover's wet dream - wall to wall fruit, veg, fish, sausages, booze, you name it. They also have various exotic fast-food outlets, including one where you can purchase a halibut burger. What's not to like?

she was only the fishmonger's daughter.....

Speaking of halibut, as I was only a couple of days ago - my local Sainsbury's had some very appetising-looking halibut fillets on their fish counter this evening, so I snapped some up for dinner.

I won't rehash the recipe as I've already described it in an earlier post, but here's a couple of pictures. Halibut is a slightly more interesting fish than pollock, I would say, but either way is good.

big fish, little fish, cardboard box

Nice to see that the Daily Mail occasionally take a break from complaining about illegal immigrant lesbian Muslim paedophiles sullying Diana's memory by causing a house price crash to run some interesting stories.

Incidentally you can generate your own Daily Mail headlines by using the link in this post (assuming it still works) or generate some Daily Mail reader stylee comments by using the SYB Twat-O-Tron.

But I digress. Here's an interesting story about a giant halibut. Apparently they can get up to twice this size. So watch yourself. Our day will come, and when it does people who haul our fishy brethren out of the sea by embedding hooks in the roof of our mouths, hang us up to take photographs and then throw us back in (or, alternatively, cut us up into juicy steaks and cook us) will very probably be first up against the wall. Just as soon as we've evolved opposable thumbs, and some means of on-land ambulation. Oh, and lungs. Any day now.

There really is a halibut museum on the island of Senja, by the way. It's only open between the 23rd of June and the 12th of August, though. Maybe that's the halibut season or something.

just for the halibut

Andy pointed this out to me a while ago, but I'd forgotten about it until someone jogged my memory earlier today - naturally I checked that the domain name was available before I bagged it, but just to be sure I wasn't treading on anyone's toes Andy did a bit of Googling and discovered the fascinating fact that there is such a thing as an Electric Halibut already - it's a bass guitar, manufactured by ESP Guitars (though I can't find it on their website, which suggests that they don't make it any more). More pictures here, though if you're expecting a translation of the Japanese text, don't look at me.

I'd forgotten the name of the manufacturer, so I thought a simple Google search would do it - unfortunately it didn't occur to me that searching on "halibut bass" would just bring back a whole load of fish-related stuff. I managed to find it eventually, though. ESP are catering for the metallic end of the guitar market, by the look of things, including some slightly metalled-up designs clearly inspired by the Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG and Gibson Explorer. I quite like these, but then I'm a sucker for a sunburst finish.

Googling "electric halibut" also reveals this fascinating article about electrocuting fish. Apparently halibut are a species "for which satisfactory killing arrangements do not yet exist". Damn those fiendish halibut!