La. crawfish released into wild from classrooms across North America

There are probably more live Louisiana crawfish crawling around the United States and Canada than you’d guess. As The Times-Picayune reports, a study presented Tuesday at the national meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Portland, Ore., found that one out of four U.S. and Canadian teachers who use live crawfish as part of their science classes release them into the wild after students are done using them. “Oregon teachers who have ordered crayfish (the word that some outside Louisiana use for crawfish) that originate in the Pacific Northwest have found that their mortality is extremely high, so many have taken to ordering crayfish from distributors who get their supply from Louisiana,” says Sam Chan, an Oregon State University invasive species expert and a principal investigator of the study. “The problem is that we have no idea whether those crayfish may carry diseases or parasites that may be problematic if those animals are released into the wild here.” The study surveyed nearly 2,000 teachers in Florida, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, California, Connecticut, British Columbia and Ontario. The researchers found that as many as 1,000 different organisms, including crawfish, were used by science teachers, and that many of those species are known or potential aquatic invasive species: elodea, crawfish, amphibians, mosquito fish, red-eared slider turtles, snails, and aquatic plants, among others. Read the full story here.