BATON ROUGE - A crawfish specialist from the LSU Agricultural Center is painting a grim picture of what the rest of crawfish season will look like.

A report from Mark Shirley warns of a limited crawfish supply and a tough recovery ahead for the industry after last summer's drought massacred the carryover crawfish in their burrows. 

"During the summer it was so hot and dry that the ground cracked and the water that was down in those burrows dried up and the crawfish died," Shirley told WBRZ.

Carryover crawfish are made up of crawfish that weren't caught during peak season times. They reproduce and emerge with their offspring around the fall each year. 

Those are what crawfish farmers rely on in the early months of crawfish season. Since a large majority of the population did not survive the drought, traps are coming out of the water empty. 

The crawfish that did survive are small and struggling even more due to the cold weather. Shirley says low temperatures stunt their growth. 

"We may see a little bit of production come later in the season sometime in the spring, but for right now, because there's so few carryover crawfish that are big enough to get to the traps, that's why the catch is very low," Shirley said. 

While the catch may increase this spring, Shirley predicts it will be a fraction of the usual product. The revenue might not be enough for crawfish farmers to break even, especially after their production cost was tripled.

Crawfish farmers pump water from nearby sources into their ponds. The drought required additional pumping for longer periods of time. 

"A lot of that water was evaporating almost as fast as they were putting it in. So farmers were running those pumps maybe three times as much or four times as much as they would usually have to pump," Shirley said. 

As a result, the market chain will suffer. From distributors, to boilers, to consumers, everyone will feel the damage.

"We'll probably have higher prices on through the rest of the spring on into April and May so that's just how it is," Shirley said. 

One glimmer of hope lies in the Atchafalaya Basin. If enough water flows downstream in the Mississippi River, that could provide crawfish farmers with a viable option to catch more.

You can read the full report from Mark Shirley below: 

"Here are a few more thoughts and observations based on what I’ve seen to date (early January).

The drought and heat during the summer and fall caused very high mortality of the carryover crawfish and brood stock. Those are the crawfish that the farmers should be catching in December, January, and February. I don’t see the catch picking anytime soon, especially considering the freezing temperatures expected thru January. Some farmers still have not put out traps mainly because test traps show no sign of crawfish.

I’ve dip netted in quite a few ponds and have found very few juvenile crawfish. The ones I do see were likely released from their mother’s tail since the big rain event the region had on December 1, 2023. Given the cold water temperature in January, their growth will be slow and not reach harvest size until late March or April. But even when these crawfish are big enough to catch, there is not a large population of them. The catch may pick up for a short while in April and May but will not be sustainable for the entire spring. The spring crop will be a fraction of what is normally caught.

In addition to the extremely short supply of crawfish, farmers are also seeing their production costs significantly increase. Pumping costs for flooding and maintaining a flood have tripled and, in some cases, quadrupled. Combined with the rise in labor cost, bait, and supplies, this will be a very expensive crop to produce.

Even with record high prices, I’m afraid many farmers will not cover their production costs of pumping, labor, bait, fuel and indirect costs for this season.

As mentioned in the LSU Drought Impact Report that came out right after Thanksgiving, there were over 45,000 acres that could not flood up due to a lack of water or canal water being too salty. Another 45,000+ acres, though flooded, will not produce any crawfish. The remaining balance will see a significant reduction in total catch. These were the predictions in November. From what I’ve seen since then, the situation is even worse now.

I realize I am painting a pretty dismal picture of the 2024 crawfish crop. But this is what I’m seeing.

Another issue is that farmers will have to stock their fields in May and June to prepare for next year. I am concerned that brood stock will be hard to come by and will be expensive. It will probably result in less acres being harvested in the 2025 season."

WATCH: A WBRZ exclusive report on the struggles crawfishermen and farmers are currently experiencing.