Legions of Louisianians dream of crawfish boils during football season, and now a University researcher may hold the key to making that a reality.LSU AgCenter aquaculture specialist Greg Lutz is researching a species similar to crawfish that he said could be commercialized and made available for crawfish boils during the fall.
The creature’s scientific name is orconectes lancifer, but it’s better known as a “shrimp crawfish,” so named for its similarities to both the shrimp and crawfish species, Lutz said.Several shrimp crawfish are often found mixed in with regular crawfish harvests, and Lutz said their taste is strikingly similar to their close relatives.”We’ve only tasted a few, but they taste just like regular crawfish,” Lutz said. “If anything, they might be a little sweeter.”The shrimp crawfish are good candidates for consumption in the fall months because their growth cycle differs from that of regular crawfish, Lutz said.Crawfish typically lay eggs from August to November, and their offspring grow throughout the spring, eventually burrowing back into the ground around June, Lutz said.But shrimp crawfish lay eggs in February that hatch mostly during March. The critters grow during the summer and reach their full size around October or November.Lutz said harvesting shrimp crawfish later in the year could be much more successful than attempts to extend the regular crawfish season.”All the efforts we’ve made over the last several decades to try to extend the crawfish season later or start it earlier have been hit or miss,” he said. “We’re trying to force those animals to reproduce outside their natural annual cycle. The idea for using [shrimp crawfish] was just to work within the natural life cycle of the animal.”The shrimp crawfish also have another benefit — they contain more meat per pound than regular crawfish.”You would probably get 20 or 25 percent more meat per pound of animal than traditional crawfish,” Lutz said.Lutz said he didn’t know how much that difference would affect the final marketplace price for shrimp crawfish.Lutz’s interest in the shrimp crawfish species was sparked in the 1980s when he first collected some during his work as a graduate student.”I thought they had some potential for culture because in the natural habitat out in the basin, you often find them in shallow, very hot water,” Lutz said. “I was impressed with their tolerance of hot water and low oxygen.”
Several years ago, a renewable natural resources student at the University collected about 40 shrimp crawfish, which Lutz began using to establish a population of the species that could be studied.
Researchers spent last summer increasing the population’s numbers, and Lutz said the AgCenter now has more than 5,000 specimens, which allows for complex research designs.The shrimp crawfish population is held in 60 research pools at the AgCenter Aquaculture Research Station, located off Ben Hur Road. Lutz is using them to study the effect of population density on the harvest’s yield.”With crawfish production, typically you get a situation where there is always a trade off between the overall yield and the size of the animals,” he said.Lutz is also researching various types of vegetation that could be placed in ponds to begin the food cycle that would sustain the shrimp crawfish.
If the research proves successful and the shrimp crawfish could be commercialized, Lutz said the species could be advantageous to crawfish farmers who already have the resources to harvest crawfish and could extend their work to shrimp crawfish.
But seafood lovers hungry for shrimp crawfish still have a while to wait. Lutz said there is still plenty work to be done before commercializing them becomes realistic.”In terms of the entire process, we’re probably only about 35 percent of the way down the road,” he said.
–Contact Ryan Buxton at [email protected]