Bait is one of the most expensive parts of doing the annual halibut surveys, and increasing chum prices have boosted costs to as much as $450,000 in recent years. That has prompted a search for less pricey fish products that might work just as well?

"Last year we did a pilot study with herring, pollock and pink salmon and compared it to chums? We found that herring was the worst so we dropped that, and pinks performed about the same as chum salmon," Leaman said. Typically, the boats use two sets of roughly 100 hooks with test bait along with four sets of the chums.