Finally, the results are in for 2010, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game says halibut anglers -- both guided and unguided -- under-harvested once again.

They were projected to catch slightly more than 7.6 million pounds of halibut statewide in 2010, but actually caught slightly less than 6.3 million pounds, according to Fish and Game, which put the actual harvest 17 percent below the expected.

The biggest drops came in harvests by unguided anglers. They were projected to catch about 2.1 million pounds of halibut in the north Gulf of Alaska area 3A -- primarily around Homer, Seward and Valdez -- but caught only 1.6 million pounds, about 31 percent less. Results in Southeast, area 2C, were similar. Unguided anglers projected to catch 2.1 million pounds in area 2C caught only about 900,000 pounds.

Charter angler catches in both areas were about 10 percent behind projections with the 2C catch at 1.1 million pounds and the 3A catch at 2.7 million pounds. The commercial catch off Alaska in 2010 was about 40 million pounds. And it is calculated another 10.5 million pounds of halibut -- more than twice the charter sport catch for the year -- were caught in commercial fisheries and dumped back into the ocean dead.

The state's analysis of the 2010 sport catch comes at a time of chaos in the halibut fisheries. The Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) earlier this year eliminated about 30 percent of the working Alaska charter halibut fleet with a limited-entry scheme. Before the consequences of that restriction were even known, NOAA bowed to the requests the commercial-fisheries run North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (NPFMC) and proposed a "catch share plan'' to force halibut charter business to share the pain of declining halibut numbers.

The International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC), a treaty organization that oversees management of Pacific Ocean halibut for the U.S. and Canadian governments, says the biomass  in the ocean has been declining because the fish don't grow nearly as fast as they once did. "For the past 15 years or so,'' the commission says, "halibut growth rates have been depressed to levels that haven't been seen since the 1920s....Sometime aorund 1980, growth rates started to drop, and now Alaska halibut of a a given age and sex are about the same size as they were in the 1920s. For example, in the northern Gulf of Alaska, an 11-year-old female halibut weighed about 20 pounds in the 1920s, nearly 50 pounds in the 1970s, and now again about 20 pounds.''

Because of the declining size of the fish, the commission has ordered catch cutbacks to protect vital spawners. Female halibut don't usually start spawning until they are 10 or 12 years old. Why the fish are growing so slowly remains a mystery, although the commission says the issue "may be tied to increased abundance of other species, such as arrowtooth flounder, and availability of food supply.''