It was unusually quiet along the waterfront as the halibut fishery got underway.
Most of the first fish landed goes to Homer, Kodiak and Petersburg and processors there said there wasn’t “the usual chatter” and none said they had a feel for what’s going to happen yet with prices. Lots of halibut remains in the freezers and some major processors had reportedly unloaded the high priced fish at a loss.
In short, no one appeared very excited – catch limits have been slashed again this year, the fleet is unhappy about having onboard observers for the first time, and processors are not getting much interest from buyers. The term heard a lot is ‘halibut fatigue’ – the high prices for halibut has shrunk processors’ margins to next to nothing, and “it’s a fight to push the fish onto people and demand the prices they are having to pay” the processors said. Halibut “is just not fun anymore, said a Petersburg company spokesman.
