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 Giant Fish: The halibut is the largest of all flatfish; the Pacific halibut,
Hippoglossus stenolepis, has been known to attain a weight of over
500 pounds (230 kg) and can be eight feet (2.4 m) or greater in
length. A very large halibut is known as a "barn door".
Females grow much larger than males with males only rarely reaching
100 pounds. Like the flounders, adult halibut typically have both
eyes on the right side of the head. Halibut have speckled or brown
top (right) sides and creamy white under (left) sides, and can be
distinguished from other flatfish by the tail. Alantic and Pacific
halibut have distinctly diffrent bone structures with that of Alantic
halibut being eaiser to cut.
 Easy to Please: Halibut feed on almost any animal they can fit in their mouths:
animals found in their stomachs include sand lance, octopus, crab,
salmon, hermit crabs, lamprey, sculpin, cod, pollack and flounder.
Halibut can be found at depths as shallow as a few metres to hundreds
of metres deep, and although they spend most of their time near
the bottom, halibut will move up in the water column to feed. In
most ecosystems the halibut is near the top of the marine food chain.
In the North Pacific the only common predators on halibut are the
sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus), the orca whale (Orcinus orca), and
the salmon shark (Lamna ditropis).
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