Cobia Rachycentron canadum
(Dr. Patrick Rice holding an adult Cobia)

Cobia is one of the prime candidate aquaculture species to be cultured worldwide in tropical waters. Ideally water temperature minimum should be not below 20 ºC.  Cobia meets all the criteria to be a very successful aquacultured fish species to come to supermarkets in the US, Europe and other parts the world. Although it is an easy species to culture, it is also quite susceptible to disease. One big difference to Salmon and temperate species such as the European Seabass and Sea Bream is that culture water temperature is a lot higher. Therefore most culture operations are (and will be) in developing or underdeveloped countries. The latter appears to be an important and somewhat unexpected challenge still holding back it's production and promised appearance in world markets.

In the Americas, the Caribbean and allmost all of Brazil has environmental conditions that are well suited for the propagation of Cobia. Many locations in the Indo-Pacific are also well suited for Cobia, i.e. from the Red Sea to Southern Taiwan. The potential of cobia aquaculture in the eastern Atlantic, i.e. off the West coast of Africa is unknown, same holds true for for the East coast of Africa. Islands off the east of Africa, such as Reunion and Mauritius already have cobia farms off their coast. Our economic analysis and experience in the Americas, has convinced us that operations below a production level of about 200 ton per year did not have the size to take advantage of the economies of scale that seem essential to succed in industrial, open-ocean, growout aquaculture of cobia.