Chicken of the Sea

Chicken Of The Sea

…previously published in Barnacle Journal…

“The most prehistorically beautiful face you can imagine. The ultimate fish – the best of all…” Rick Hill, Salt Spring Island fisherman (retired and floundering) describing the Pacific Halibut.

Although not as large as its Atlantic cousin, the Pacific Halibut is a behemoth, in its own right. Females can reach eight feet and weigh in at 600 pounds. (This would be something to avoid while poking around a garage sale – let it have the lamp.)

These are territorial animals, but when in the mood will travel up to 2,000 miles to spawn. Just imagine walking from Vancouver to Winnipeg – once a year – for a blind date…exactly the same thing. Our very fertile friend will produce as many as 2,700,000 eggs that drift about aimlessly in the deep until the onshore currents bring them to rest on the shallower banks of Queen Charlotte Sound and Hecate Strait. Here they develop and grow up – do the eye thing.

How to describe this unique fish to someone who’s never laid eyes on one? Well, picture your daughter coming home one night and describing her new boy friend this way: “Boy oh boy Dad, I caught a big one! He’s, like, eight feet long, Mum; gotta weigh close to 600 pounds – WOW! – And get this Dad, both his eyes are on the right side of his head. Or is it the left side? COOL EH!?” To illustrate her new beau’s ‘look of love’ your daughter squashes her face up against the kitchen window and bugs her eyes out.

What would you think? You could have the lad over for dinner (careful with that…). What does he eat, you inquire, politely. “Oh, you know,” your young lady replies. “Live stuff mostly: octopus, squid, herring, cod – anything off the floor. He’ll even eat a live bird if you ask him to…he’s, like, SO COOL!”

Cosmetics aside, this famous flounder has an enthusiastic following on Salt Spring Island. The residents bake him, fry him, barbecue him and deep fry him. OUCH! The big fish’s fans consume gallons of lemon butter and buckets of Cole slaw. Deep down, in their very soles, the Halibut lovers just flat-out love it to pieces.

-Heidi Teichtmann, a true ‘afishionado’: “I think Halibut is a beautiful fish.”

-Bob Morrisette, the Harbour Manager: “…a nice piece of fish with delicious, firm, white meat.”

-Betty Hill actually seemed offended by my flip description of our subject: “There is beauty, Peter,” she said, her eyes remaining fixed on the front of my face, and hers. “Beauty is everything.”

-Cathy Proctor was prodded gently into admitting that she once carried a headless Halibut from the dock to her car, slipped the vehicle into gear, drove it home, and carried/dragged the corpse across the lawn and into her house. Cathy is very fit - she quite enjoyed the experience; but then that was a headless Halibut – whole different thing.

Fish die belly upwards and rise to the surface. It is their way of falling…Andre Gide.