A relative newcomer to the U.S. seafood market, barramundi is finding a place both at high-end restaurants and mid-scale retailers, where its versatility and eco-friendly reputation have earned it a following. Australia’s Aborigines dubbed this species barramundi, meaning river fish with large scales; it spends most of its life in rivers, migrating to estuaries to breed and then returning to its original river system. A member of the sea bass family, barramundi is native to Australia’s northern tropical waters and parts of Southeast Asia. Farms and wild fisheries supply the growing global market. The hardy barramundi can grow to market size of 1.5 to 2 pounds in less than a year, making it well suited for aquaculture. Farming of this species started in Thailand in the 1970s and spread throughout Southeast Asia, in small, coastal cage operations. Barramundi also is raised in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam and in the United States at facilities in western Massachusetts and Florida. An Australian company is farming barramundi in open-ocean cages off the Marshall Islands. The world’s biggest supplier is Indonesia, where production is mainly 5- to 10-pound barramundi from wild fisheries.