The halibut is among the largest teleost (bony) fish in the world, and is a threatened species owing to a slow rate of growth and overfishing.

[citation needed] This marine fish usually lives on the ocean floor at depths between 50 and 2,000 m (200 and 6,600 ft), but it occasionally comes closer to the surface.

Young between the ages of two and four years live close to the shore, moving into deeper waters as they grow older.

They are found in the eastern Atlantic around Iceland, the United Kingdom, Ireland and northern Europe to Russia.

A map of the Atlantic Halibut's geographic distribution can be found on the Official Website of Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

[citation needed] The Atlantic halibut occupies a relatively high trophic level in the food chain.

The diet of the Atlantic halibut consists mainly of other fish, e.g.,cod, haddock, herring, pogge, sand eels and capelin, but it will also eat cephalopods, large crustaceans and other benthos organisms.

The wild Atlantic halibut was formerly a very important food fish, but because of its slow rate of population growth, it is unable to recover quickly from overfishing, and the fishery has largely collapsed.

In 2010, Greenpeace International added the Atlantic halibut to its seafood red list of "fish that are commonly sold in supermarkets around the world, and which have a very high risk of being sourced from unsustainable fisheries.

It became commercially important during the 19th century because of the great demand for its meat and halibut being one of the largest flatfishes and essentially easy to capture.

[citation needed] This article incorporates text from the ARKive fact-file "Atlantic halibut" under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and the GFDL.