Ash Wednesday in south Louisiana marks the unofficial start of crawfish season, and so far this year the supply looks promising. However, it’s early in the season and mudbugs are still pricey—fetching $3 per pound or more for live crawfish and as much as $6 per pound for boiled. That’s not likely to change until the accumulated snow blanketing northern states starts to melt and makes its way down the Mississippi River and into local water waterways, according to experts.
“The crawfish looks promising from the size we’ve seen, but the whole thing about it is whenever we get water,” says Henderson Mayor Sherbin Collette, a commercial fisherman and a member of the Louisiana Seafood Marketing and Promotion Board. “Right now all the rivers are low, and that means there is not enough water for the crawfish.”
Local farmers say the mudbugs they are catching appear to be decent in size but won’t stay that way unless northern snows melt quickly.
“The best we can hope for is a quick warm-up followed by a lot of rain,” Collette says. “If the snow melts gradually the rivers will rise gradually, and that won’t get us the water we need.”
While the season looks promising, some industry farmers and processors are concerned over new federal regulations that mandate higher salaries for immigrant laborers, who fill thousands of jobs in Louisiana’s seafood industry every season. Processors and restaurateurs complain the new rules are driving up the price of local crawfish—increases that are being passed on to consumers.
It’s still early, though, to say how weather and labor issues will affect the season, which doesn’t peak until late April.
—Stephanie Riegel
