A small fish in a big can just swam out the door, and Nosy Tarsee is unimpressed by the chum thrown out to explain it.

Word from a thinly traded tuna-and-salmon counter: The skipper who had been at the helm since 2022 and who, by his own numbers, had just turned a loss into a profit abruptly stepped down from the bridge, the board seat and all, citing the standard two-for-one excuse that PSE disclosures keep in stock: “personal and health reasons.”

Effective the last day of June, no less. Convenient timing for an anniversary nobody wants to celebrate. Not DAILY TRIBUNE’s 26th, of course. That is one anniversary we want to celebrate with much hoopla.

What Tarsee finds fishy is not the resignation. Executives leave. It is that the company’s own disclosure admits there is no one ready to take the wheel yet, only a promise to find “a successor or officer-in-charge” sometime after the fact.

For an outfit that had just been crowing about expansion and efficiency gains to its own shareholders only months earlier, that is a strange way to plan a graceful exit.

Nobody has said the health excuse is a lie.

Nosy Tarsee, however, is saying it is the kind of phrase that closes a door rather than opens a window — and four years is a long time to build something only to leave without a relief pitcher warmed up in the bullpen.