The Louisiana crawfish season has two to three more weeks before it begins to sputter out as temperatures mount, demand slacks, and crawfish begin to burrow into the mud to lay eggs and escape the heat.

This week, most of the remaining crawfish farmers began draining their ponds. So now, wild crawfish makes up the bulk of the supply in stores, markets and restaurants here and across the country.

Gauging the wild crop

As the Atchafalaya River Basin, where most wild crawfish is caught, continues to drop in the coming weeks, fewer trappers will harvest those waters.

Jody Meche of Henderson, La., said he hopes to continue harvesting the basin for crawfish through August. But, he would be one of the few.

"When our water levels are at their height, at the peak of our season, we have as much as 2,000 licensed crawfish fishermen out here," said Meche, a Henderson councilman who also serves as vice-president of the Louisiana Crawfish Promotion and Research Board. "When the water drops below about 9 feet, that drops to 100 or maybe 200 fishermen, so about 10 percent or so."

Typically, crawfish fishers talk about the height of the Atchafalaya River at Butte La Rose, which was at about 11 feet on Friday compared to about 14 feet near the end of April, according to its river gage. Moving forward, the height of the river largely will depend on rain.

Crawfish supply and demand

Larger retailers such as Rouses anticipate having some crawfish into August, but smaller seafood markets likely will stop selling mudbugs by July 4, or earlier.

"I think we will have it for a few weeks, but I'd say starting in about two (weeks), it will be hit or miss," said Chester George, a manager at Fisherman's Cove Seafood market in Kenner.

Overall, prices per pound currently range in the metro New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas from as low as $1.70 per pound for live crawfish to as high as about $3 per pound for boiled crawfish.

As shrimp and crab seasons start up, consumer desire generally moves away from crawfish and toward that other local catch. While shrimpers and crabbers, and their dealers, said they are getting abundant calls about their catch, they said this week that brown shrimp supply is low and its priced high. Crab also is delayed and just now beginning to trickle in, they said.

Jeff Pohlmann, owner of Today's Ketch in Chalmette, said that with shrimp and crab lagging, "crawfish is actually carrying us right now."

"This slow start to the shrimp and crab season, and crawfish's late start because of the cold winter, that to me is what is keeping crawfish going as well as it is going," Pohlmann said. "Everything is about a month of so behind."

"But people will quit the crawfish before the crawfish quits them," he added, referring to demand.

The cold start

When water is below 50 degrees, cold-blooded crawfish move in slow motion, mainly staying stationary. The babies are dissuaded from foraging for the food they need to grow, which can lead to smaller, softer crawfish, and makes them more difficult to catch. Some are so tiny they simply slip through the nets.

And because of the cold winter causing a late start to this year's crawfish season, farmed-raised production overall appears to have been down as much as 30 to 40 percent from last year. But higher prices this year – due largely to reduced supply – largely offset the effects of that reduced production for many crawfish farmers.

"We broke even and made a little something because the season actually picked up really nice at the end of April, in May and early June," said Stephen Minvielle, director of the Louisiana Crawfish Promotion and Research Board and the Louisiana Crawfish Farmer's Association.

But Minvielle said farmers still garnered below-average profits because of the late start. He said farmers typically make about a 40 percent net return whereas this year he predicted it would be closer to 20 percent.

"You can't get it back, all of what you lost, because when it gets hot, that's it, the crawfish bury," Minvielle said.

Crawfish molt, mature, mate, then burrow

Robert Romaire, a crawfish biologist with the LSU AgCenter, explained crawfish reach maturity and mate after 11 molts, wherein they shed their shell and then grow and create a thicker shell. Typically, he said, it takes about four to five months for the crawfish to reach maturity, with a large portion of that peaking in June.

After reaching maturity, crawfish mate and the females burrow into the mud to lay their eggs, he said. The males also will burrow, after likely mating with a few more females, once conditions get too hot and as the water drops.

Then mainly beginning in the fall, females will emerge from their burrows with their babies in tow, starting the new cycle of growth.

There are about 183,000 acres of farmed crawfish in the state, according to LSU AgCenter data. Louisiana crawfish account for about 98 percent of the national market, with the farm-reared crawfish typically accounting for more than 85 percent of the total annual supply.