Crawfish prices fall as supply rises

Dealers say size nice for time of year

Even though some experts predicted that drought conditions last year would limit the availability of crawfish early in the season, local seafood dealers say that supply has been exceeding demand in St. Charles Parish.

That increased supply of crawfish has also caused prices to drop recently. Both The Seafood Pot in Destrehan and Zeringue’s Seafood in Boutte are selling a pound of live crawfish for $3.19. Last week, both stores were selling a pound for around $3.49.

“Most people don’t expect the price of crawfish to drop until after Lent, but we started at $3.99 for a pound of live crawfish and that has already fallen to $3.19 as of Monday,” Blandon Zeringue, of Zeringue’s Seafood, said. “With the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras coming up, the demand will start picking up, but as long as the supply is there prices should continue to fall in the next month.”

Erik Donnaud, the manager of The Seafood Pot in Destrehan, agreed.

“At this time of the year, the price usually starts out around that mark, but it’s coming down each week,” he said. “I think by the end of the season crawfish will be going for a little bit lower price this year than they were last year.”

Donnaud said that the crop has been plentiful so far due to warmer winter temperatures.

“It wasn’t a cold winter so the crop should be a little better this year,” he said. “I know the catch is up right now.”

Both Zeringue and Donnaud said that drought conditions that occurred last year have had little to no effect on the crawfish harvest.

“The supply has been great from what I’ve been seeing, so I don’t think the drought had any impact,” Donnaud said. “I think that’s just something fishermen seem to say every year to drive up the price at the beginning of the season.

“Right now there is more supply than demand, and the recent rains should increase the crawfish harvest even more.”

As for the size, both men have been pleasantly surprised with the harvest.

“The size has actually been nice,” Zeringue said. “I’ve been hearing that there are a lot of smaller crawfish around, but our area has produced real nice ones. Usually at this time the crawfish are smaller, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the crawfish we have been getting in.”