BATON ROUGE, La. — In Jeff Pohlmann’s 39 years of selling crawfish in Louisiana he has neverever seen the market face such an abysmal lack of “mudbugs.”
Driven by last summerseason’s dryspell, extreme heat, saltwater invasion on the Mississippi River and a difficult winterseason freeze, the country’s top manufacturer of crawfish gathered a portion of what is common of the small shellfishes in a season — with 10s of thousands of acres lost or stoppingworking. And while Louisianans are still purchasing and selling crawfish, a staple in Gulf Coast seafood boils and a part of Louisiana’s “way of life,” the crisis can be felt throughout the state.
“I’ve neverever experienced this before and it strikes you in the wallet,” stated Pohlmann.
At the yearly Louisiana Crawfish Festival in St. Bernard Parish, fans chowing down on crawfish pasta, bread, pies and etouffee stated the shellfishes haveactually been restricted so far this season. Some stated they have yet to goto a crawfish boil, popular throughout Lent when numerous in the greatly Catholic south Louisiana lookfor options to meat. Pounds of the newly prepared mudbugs with corn and potatoes are put onto common tables.
High costs haveactually indicated that “nobody has truly been boiling,” stated Sara Garcia, a Louisiana resident who frequently goesto