474 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



considerable space, are alike. Halibut, like other flounders, are scaly on the whole 

 head and body and are very slimy with mucus. 



Color. — The halibut is chocolate to olive or slaty brown on the eyed (upper) 

 side. Young fish are lighter and more or less mottled while large ones are more 

 uniform and darker, sometimes almost black. The blind (lower) side is pure 

 white in small fish, but large ones are often more or less blotched or clouded with 

 gray (known by fishermen as "grays").' 15 



Size. — Among Gulf of Maine fishes only swordfish, tuna, and some of the larger 

 shark's reach a greater size than the halibut, and since the reports of specimens 

 of 600 to 700 pounds have usually been looked on as exaggerations we are glad to be 

 able to give at least one record of a Gulf of Maine halibut in this weight class. The 

 fish in question was taken in June, 1917, by Capt. A. S. Ree, about 50 miles east- 

 northeast of Cape Ann, and since it weighed 615 pounds (gutted, but with the head 

 still attached) when brought in to the Boston fish pier it must have been as heavy 

 as 700 pounds while alive. 48 Another halibut of 602 pounds is said to have been 

 taken near Isle au Haut in 1902, but we can not vouch for this. 



Halibut of 500 to 600 pounds are rumored almost every year, but the next largest 

 of which we have definite knowledge was one of about 450 pounds caught on a hand 

 line in the deep water between Browns and Georges Banks in 1908 by W. F. Clapp. 

 Goode (et al., 1S84) likewise had records of a dozen fish of 350 to 400 pounds caught 

 off the New England coast, but a halibut heavier than 300 pounds is, and apparently 

 always was, a rarity anywhere in the North Atlantic, so much so, indeed, that the 

 heaviest ever caught or seen by two of the most experienced halibut fishermen who 

 supplied Goode with information weighed only about 300 (237 dressed) and 401 

 pounds, respectively (the latter caught near Race Point, Cape Cod, in July, 1849). 

 Full-grown females average about 100 to 150 pounds. Males run smaller, and most of 

 the " large" fish landed in New England ports weigh from 50 to 200 pounds. Halibut 

 between 7 and 8 feet long usually weigh 300 to 350 pounds, and the relationship of 

 length to weight in the smaller sizes appears from the following table based on 

 Icelandic fish measured by Jesperson. 47 



Length, in inches Weight, in pounds 



74 215 



70 168 



61 107 



54 to 56 60^ 



40 to 42 29 



36 11 to 12 



30 9H 



27 m 



24 b]4 



General range.— The halibut is a cold-water fish found in the North Pacific, 

 the Arctic, and in the North Atlantic Oceans. They are, or once were, caught in 

 abundance off the eastern coast of North America from the Gulf of St. Lawrence 



< 5 Storer (1867) says that halibut with both sides brown have been seen, and occasionally a fish with the lower side marked 

 with dark patches of the same color as the upper side. 



" An account of this fish was given in the Boston Daily Globe of June 12, 1917. It was purchased by the Shore Fish Co. 

 * 7 Meddelelser fra Kommissionen for Havunders^gelser, Serie: Fiskeri, Bind V, Nr. 5, 1917. 



