Zachary Fitzgerald
A south Louisiana winter that has been colder than normal so far has caused a sluggish start to the 2018 crawfish season. But industry officials are optimistic that crawfish will be a lot more plentiful by March or April.
Mark Shirley, an aquaculture specialist with LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant, said several “cold snaps” since December have slowed crawfish growth and activity in ponds, which has significantly reduced the catch.
However, the cold weather has not killed crawfish.
“It just slowed down their movement coming to the traps. And it slowed down their growth cycles,” Shirley said. “They’re still there in the ponds. It’s just going to take some warm weather to really get them moving, get them growing.”
Shirley still expects the peak of the pond crawfish season to be solid in March and April with “lots of crawfish to eat in springtime,” he said.
Sidney “Peanut” Michel, owner of D&B Seafood in Morgan City, said crawfish season has had a really slow early start to the season. He just recently started getting a couple of sacks at a time for his store.
But prices are so high right now that it’s hard to sell them, Michel said. Restaurants and seafood stores are selling boiled crawfish to customers anywhere from the upper $5 to upper $6 per pound range, while live crawfish are around $4 per pound, he said.
“It’s hard to get enough to operate with,” Michel said of the current crawfish supply.
On top of already high prices, an early Lenten season in 2018 will cause prices to rise even higher with increased demand for crawfish and limited supply, Michel said.
“Once the supply starts coming in pretty heavy, then the prices will start dropping to the farmers as well as to the consumer,” Shirley said.
Michel gets his crawfish from ponds in the Church Point, Opelousas and Lawtell areas, which start producing crawfish later than the Abbeville and Kaplan areas.
As for crawfish production in the Atchafalaya Basin, it’s still too early to tell how the Basin season may be, Michel said.
“In the past, when you get a cold, wet winter, it means you usually have a decent season,” Michel said.
There also needs to be a decent amount of water in the basin that stays high for an extended period of time during the winter, he said. April and May are usually the peak months for basin crawfish.
“We can just hope for the best. That’s all everybody’s doing right now is just hoping things start picking up,” Michel said.