Mekong Catfish?

I stumbled on a little blurb today about a North American value-add (that is, prebreaded filets, coconut shrimp, etc.) seafood distributor moving into the Pangasius market. The what market? I thought I was up on the latest seafood trends, but either I missed this one or it's just coming to America. I see that a lot of Europeans already know about this fish, judging from the number of posts in both Finnish and German.

Pangasius is a rather large genus of fish in the catfish family. Of the many, many species, apparently the money species and the next Tilapia for aquaculture is P. hypopthalamus, the Mekong Catfish or Iridescent Shark. Apparently these fish tolerate very crowded conditions, grow rapidly to market size in 6 months, and are acceptably white and mild in flavor.

It's already the number one farmed species in Vietnam, so I expect that we'll be seeing it on the market here soon. (Or not. What's wrong with our Channel Cats?) Just remember you heard it here first. ;)