1 year 6 months ago
Drought and freezing temperatures have delayed the crawfish season in Louisiana and East Texas. The crawfish season usually begins in January and stretches until July, but the January harvest was roughly 10% of usual, according to a crawfish distributor in Austin. The crawfish were also smaller, so they were difficult to eat and less likely to survive the eight-hour trip to Central Texas.
The freezing weather in January was also hard on the crawfish as the crustaceans struggled to get enough oxygen in the frozen ponds.
With fewer crawfish available, restaurants were charging $16 to $22 per pound just to break even, according to local vendors. A restaurant in Georgetown planned to begin selling mudbugs this year, but was deterred by the high prices. Another restaurant owner began driving to Louisiana to get some crawfish, but found that half of them were dead by the time he returned with them. Selling crawfish was not profitable yet this year.
Community Impact – Austin (Texas), Feb 13, 2024
Farmers and restaurateurs were in a supply crisis as crawfish season began after a summer of drought and intense heat in Louisiana. Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency due to the heat. In October, there was not enough freshwater to flood the fields, which encourages crawfish to emerge from their burrows and repopulate. The January freeze also hurt the crustaceans. Altogether, the loss to Louisiana’s $230 million crawfish industry was an estimated 60%.
A crawfish distributor in Crowley, Louisiana who sells to H-E-B has normally bought from 100,000 to 150,000 pounds of mudbugs in the first week of February, but this year, he only bought 6,000 pounds, which is not enough for the grocery chain, so he sold to restaurants.
At two farms in Acadia and Allen parishes in early February, just ten pounds of crawfish were harvested, in comparison to the normal of nearly 400 pounds.
The marine extension agent for LSU AgCenter thought that 75% to 90% of Louisiana’s farm-raised crawfish could be lost this year due to extreme weather. In Texas, crawfish farmers were faring slightly better for a number of possible reasons, according to an aquaculture extension specialist and marine extension agent of Texas A&M. Texas producers typically begin to harvest in late February, so it was not yet clear how Texas crawfish were affected by the drought and heat of the summer. Producers in the Hamshire and Sour Lake area of Harris County in Southeast Texas were not too worried about the crawfish.
A crawfish restaurant in Crosby, about 25 miles east of Houston, opened on January 31 and sold them for $13 per pound. The owner has since closed to wait for prices to fall a bit because he felt badly charging so much for crawfish.
A Beaumont restaurant usually sees sales jump 15% to 20% during crawfish season. This year, crawdads will not be sold until the wholesale price came down to $5 per pound. One of the co-owners has seen competitors selling them for $12 to $17 per pound, buy did not feel that his customers would tolerate that.
An Austin seafood market received up to 40 calls per day from people seeking crawfish for the Super Bowl. The owner is not sure whether she will carry crawfish at all this year.
A Houston restaurant owner initially sold mudbugs for $16 per pound in early January, which led to accusations of price gouging. On January 20, the price was lowered to $12.99 per pound. As of mid-February, the cost is $11.99. This year, total sales in January amounted to $2,900. Last January, sales were between $100,000 and $120,000.
Texas Monthly (Austin), Feb 13, 2024
A San Antonio restaurant has gotten some field run crawfish in, which is a mix of sizes rather than all larger crawfish. They were selling for $13.99 per pound, although the price would usually be $7.99 per pound or sometimes maybe $6.99.
KENS5 (San Antonio, Texas), Feb 13, 2024
A restaurant that sells crawfish in Bryan was having trouble getting the mudbugs. Sales of the crustaceans was down 5,500 pounds this year compared to 2023. The week of the Super Bowl this year, they sold about 600 pounds, in comparison with about 6,000 pounds last year.
The effect of the reduction to the crawfish population was being felt industrywide, from the fishermen to the suppliers to the restaurants.
KBTX (Bryan, Texas), Feb 13, 2024
