Famous Louisiana Crawfisherman Explains What May Save the Season

Lafayette, LA (KPEL News) - Louisiana crawfish farmers are struggling to fill their sacks.  Experts have given a variety of reasons for the anemic harvest, including one famous crawfisherman in the video below. Can they save Louisiana's favorite season?

The brutal heat and lack of rain throughout the summer didn't only leave the earth cracked, it also killed off the remnants of a rice harvest that crawfish feed on. When farmers started flooding the fields to start their season, the ecosystem they rely on was essentially decimated.

LSU AgCenter crawfish specialist Mark Shirley has been monitoring the situation that has all of us nervous about whether we will be able to afford the Cajun staple, if we can even find them to buy.

The current average price per pound for live crawfish is $10. The price and lack of crawfish has already forced a Louisiana restaurant to close.

Most of us don't understand the crawfish farming process and how one season builds on another.

Shirley checks ponds around south Louisiana to predict how the season currently is and what that information means for the remainder of the season.

The news, as we've heard ad nauseum, is not good.

Fields we see when driving around Acadiana need what Shirley calls "carryover crawfish." They come out of the ground and begin to procreate which is necessary to have a good harvest.

Jacob Landry, the son of "Swamp People" star Troy Landry, owns a restaurant and fishes crawfish in the basin. Jacob and his dad are both in the crawfish business when they aren't hunting alligators.

The basin crawfish season typically ramps up around the time the demand does, around Easter, but Landry says the low water levels are concerning.

The bright spot is the rain coming down in the Ohio Valley which will drain through the Atchafalaya Basin, making the levels rise. Fingers crossed that it happens, and the basin season improves.

Like he says, hopefully their forecast of a bad season is wrong.

Pay close attention, too, at the end of the video. Please don't let your crawfish envie get the best of you and buy foreign crawfish. Bad idea. Just bad.