Copious Amounts of Cobia

Have you gotten hooked on cobia?

If not, you soon will—and if you are a retailer, you had best prepare a space in your seafood case for the mild, firm, white-fleshed fish with a rich, butter flavor. At least that is the hope of officials at Open Blue, a Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada-based fishery that is introducing Open Blue Cobia, farm-raised in pristine Caribbean waters to the U.S. market.

I recently attended a press event thrown by Open Blue, which was held at The Cull & Pistol Oyster Bar in New York’s famed Chelsea Market in conjunction with the bar’s sister company The Lobster Place seafood market next door. The purpose of the reception was to introduce the New York trade press, bloggers and restaurateurs to Open Blue Cobia.   

In addition to watching a Cobia farm on an Oculus, a newfangled version of a View Master, we feasted on a variety of hors d’oeuvres prepared by The Cull & Pistol’s executive chef Dave Seigal, including Cobia sushi; miso-cured Cobia with dashi gelee and yuzu; Cobia Poke with edamame, Hijiki and tobiko (a crowd favorite); and Seared Cobia with local asparagus purée (another fave). 

Open Blue officials say Open Blue Cobia is carried in Publix and some other retailers in the Southeast, and has been promoted in Wegmans.   

Open Blue raises its cobia in diamond-shaped netted cages in an open-water environment eight miles offshore in the Caribbean. The company has established a 2,500-acre commercial no take zone, making it a protected marine zone, and the largest ocean “mariculture” system in the world. The fish swim in high-energy currents and never see the same water twice, which far lowers the risk of disease and havs no major impact on the surrounding ecosystem, said Mike Magnus, president and CEO of Open Blue.  

“Our goal is to harvest, within four to five years, annually 8,000 to 10,000 metric tons of Cobia,” Magnus said. “Right now, North America is our biggest market, but when you look at global seafood, per capita, the average North American consumes 14 pounds of seafood annually, compared to 45 and 60 pounds in Europe, and Asia is 90 to 100 pounds.

Cobia offers consumers better features than seafood-case mainstay salmon, Magnus said. 

“It is more versatile with much higher omega-3 content. You can eat it raw, and there are so many ways of using it,” Magnus said, adding that Open Blue Cobia is environmentally friendly.

“We operate the most eco-friendly sustainable aquacultural system that is technologically advanced in the world,” Magnus said. 

Chef Seigal was one of those raving about the quality of the fish and its versatility. “People shy away from things they are unfamiliar with, so you have to get it in their mouth, and once they taste it they get it,” Seigal said. 

“The fish come in generally the same size, about 8-pounds, since they are all harvested at the same time,” he said. “That is different than a wild fish where they are all different sizes so the cook time would not be the same, and it is very easy to prepare at home. 

“Cobia has a great, dense skin that when seared gets nice and crispy. It is an interesting fish that you don’t see on a lot of menus, but you will be seeing it more and more,” Seigal said. “People are starting to move away from tuna, salmon, swordfish. You are starting to see tilefish on a lot of menus now. As people look to fish that are more affordable and sustainable, they are looking for something different to try, rather than eating the same thing all the time.”

The Lobster Place’s wholesale division sells Cobia, and volume is up to about 700 pounds a week, Seigal noted.  

Cobia is so new that when I emailed the pictures that I took, the folks who run the spell-check department at Apple took the liberty of changing the “Cobia” in my subject line to “coins,” “conus,” “cobra” (my favorite), and “Vivian” (what’s up with that?).      

They had better get on board with what is likely to be the next big hit in the seafood case.