A dry summer, two hurricanes and a chilly winter is forcing Louisianians to wait a bit longer to eat the claws and suck the heads of a big batch of boiled crawfish.Crawfish season started slowly this year across Louisiana, as early harvest numbers are down 50 percent from a year ago. Louisiana crawfish farmers are playing catch-up to meet demand this season. “The start of [the season] so far is ranging from zero production to the best production of 50 percent,” said Louisiana Crawfish Farmers Association President David Savoy. “I honestly don’t look for us to have any type of production to meet demand until March.” Aquaculture Research Station professor Greg Lutz gave a similar assessment of the start of the crawfish season. “At this point in the season, we’re down maybe a third to a half of what we were this time last year,” Lutz said. Lutz  said the season could pick up when the late-hatching crawfish reach full size. “The fact that it has been a slow season up to this point doesn’t necessarily mean that the remainder of the season is going to be bad,” he said. “In a lot of areas, there will probably be fewer crawfish than in a normal year.” The current farm-to-market price for a pound of unboiled crawfish ranges from $2.25 to $3.00. Tony’s Seafood Market and Deli in Baton Rouge charges $3.99 per pound. Tony’s manager Charles Dupius said supply is “not even close right now” to meeting demand. He said the price could drop to around $1.99 per pound later in the season, noting, “It’s hard to say this early.” But Louisiana crawfish farmers may be down too much to make up this year. “To a certain extent, we won’t catch up,” Lutz said. “But if we have good survival of these late-hatching crawfish, over the next few months they’ll reach a nice size.”  Savoy agreed, saying Louisiana crawfish farmers will have a difficult year. “From the farmer’s perspective, we’ll still struggle to make that up, even if production picks up,” he said. Perhaps the bleakest assessment of the season came from former Louisiana Crawfish Farmers Association president Stephen Minvielle, who called it a “very bad year.” “It’s best now to reserve them,” Minvielle said. “The lack of supply will drive the price up.” Gary Marino, manager of Baton Rouge restaurant Mike Anderson’s Seafood, said the crawfish season hasn’t really started for them. He said the crawfish simply weren’t big enough yet.  He said they hope for bigger crawfish “by the end of February.” Lutz cited several causes for the low harvest production in the early part of the season.  First, the dry summer caused the deaths of many burrowing crawfish because they need to remain damp to breathe through their gills. “When we get really dry conditions in the summertime in a local area, that can really impact the survival of those animals down in the burrows because they have to stay damp,” Lutz said. A second factor in the low production this year is the effect of two hurricanes, especially Hurricane Gustav. Aquaculture Research Station professor Robert Romaire said the floodwater forced crawfish in many areas out of their burrows prematurely. “Gustav made crawfish ponds flood a little earlier than we wanted them to,” he said. “When the water evaporated, those crawfish perished.” Lutz said the floodwaters were low in oxygen and nutrients. “You can drown a crawfish,” he said. “If there’s no oxygen in the water, they will die.” A third factor was the relatively cold weather this winter, which caused the cold-blooded crawfish to remain small. “They need to be a certain size to be large enough to stay in the traps,” Lutz said. “Every year, there are literally millions of pounds of small crawfish that are left in the ponds that we just don’t have a market for.” Romaire said the combined effects of these three factors caused the low production early this season. But Lutz insisted crawfish will be available for people to eat this year. “If people want crawfish, they’ll still be able to find crawfish,” he said. “You may drink one fewer beer to make up the difference in the cost of crawfish, but there will still be plenty for everyone to enjoy.”—-Contact Matthew Barnidge at [email protected]