In Louisiana, extreme weather is doing the unforgivable: endangering the crawfish season

Adlar Stelly is 42 years old, which means it’s fair to say he’s been involved in crawfish farming in Louisiana for almost 42 years.

He grew up surrounded by the shallow ponds littered with the lobster traps set by his father. At age 7, he piloted the boat while his older brother hauled in the traps. It wasn’t long before he managed to empty them himself. He and his brother now have about 3,000 acres of their own ponds in southern Louisiana.

He has seen bountiful seasons and others that were scarcer. But in all that time, he has never experienced a season as harrowing as this one, where the pitfalls were so consistently exposed week after frustrating week.

The catch at one pond last day was enough to fill four bags, each about the size of a large pillowcase. In a better year, that catch would have been 25, maybe even 30 bags.

“Here we are, we’re halfway through Lent,” Mr. Stelly said, pointing to what is usually the peak time for live crawfish boils in this heavily Catholic part of the world.

“You’re running out of time,” he added. “The stress is at an all-time high.”

The persistent heat that battered the Gulf Coast during a record summer continues to punish Louisiana. Farmers and scientists say the summer drought has dealt a blow directly to the state’s soul in a way that hurricanes or other extreme weather never have: It has come dangerously close to ruining the crawfish season.

Across the state, farmers have reported harvests as disastrous as Mr. Stelly’s, if not worse, even as they have taken on the enormous costs of pumping water for their dry ponds.

Crawfish prices have skyrocketed, reaching nearly double what they were last year earlier in the season. Boiled crawfish, practically a staple in Louisiana, felt more like a luxury. Last month, Governor Jeff Landry even issued a disaster declaration, saying the industry “needs all the support it can get right now.”

The resulting turbulence and heartache reflects how crawfish play a role in virtually every facet of Louisiana: its economy, its culture, even its blood pressure. (Veterans of crawfish consumption know to take off their rings, as the seasoning’s sodium content can make their fingers swell.)

In Acadiana, the constellation of communities surrounding Lafayette that form the heart of Cajun Louisiana, the smell of boils often wafts through the neighborhoods. Chances are every long Friday night line ends at a popular cooking spot. And images of the decapods—bright red with claws, antennae, and eyes with black dots—are everywhere: crawfish curtains, crawfish tablecloths, crawfish paper towel holders, crawfish caps, crawfish T-shirts, crawfish earrings.

“It should be on the flag, you know what I mean?” Sean Suire, owner of Cajun Table restaurant in Lafayette, said as he put more seasoning on already seasoned crawfish, fresh from the kettle.

“Without crawfish,” he added, “there is no party.”

Crawfish are often grown together with rice in supple fields that are drained in the summer for the rice harvest. The crawfish then retreat into the earth to lay their eggs, emerging in late fall when the ponds are refilled.

Last year alone, many crawfish were killed by the heat or forced to dig deeper to survive, farmers and experts say.

“We know drought can affect crawfish, but we didn’t know the extent to which it happens,” said Mark Shirley, a longtime crawfish specialist at Louisiana State University’s AgCenter. Farmers “spent three to four times as much on fuel and time pumping water,” he added. “The water evaporated almost as quickly as they pumped it into the field.”

The harvest, which typically continues until June, has increased modestly in recent weeks and prices have fallen. Boiled crawfish were selling around Lafayette for about $7 to $9 per pound, according to a recent scan of the Crawfish App that many use to track prices and find nearby boils; they went for $12 or more in February around Mardi Gras. (An average person typically consumes about three pounds at a time.)

Yet the damage has already been done: there is no chance of making a profit this season, Mr. Stelly said. The best he can hope for is to earn enough to cover his expenses.

Mr. Stelly recently traveled to Washington, where he reluctantly called on congressional representatives and federal officials to provide some financial support to the industry.

“I don’t want help,” he said. “I want to go to work, catch crawfish and make money.”

These days, Mr. Stelly doesn’t spend as much time in the ponds as he used to. He also runs a dock where about 50 area farmers bring their catch so it can be sorted and delivered live to Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and even Florida.

His phone rings constantly. Buyers continue to ask if the inventory is finally enough to make the trip worth it. Farmers are expressing concerns about what will happen if they cannot recoup their costs. He tries to listen patiently to concerns that are very similar to his own.

The numbers are alarming: Only 1,281 pounds of crawfish moved through the dock in December. That month, the year before, there had been 78,000. In January it cost roughly £4,340, compared to £158,000 the year before.

“I finally got you a full bag,” Chris Frith, who has a small farm, said to Mr. Stelly as he delivered it. “I wish I had five or ten.”

Mr. Frith had tried to outsmart the heat by using spring water to moisten the burrows.

“It didn’t help,” he said.

“I think cooking them probably helped,” Mr. Stelly said.

“That’s right,” Mr. Frith replied. “It cooked them in the ground – without salt and without pepper.”

Crawfish farming is an amalgamation of science, art, faith, superstition and hard work. The formula varies from farmer to farmer. It is said that a successful day follows a storm, as thunder awakens the crawfish from the earth. Another credits his wife’s prayer. Many adhere to practices passed down from generation to generation.

And even then, the crawfish can remain a mystery.

“It’s a lot of luck,” said Mr. Suire, Lucas, 60, who farms the same few hundred acres as his father and grandfather. “I don’t understand crawfish. I’ve been doing this for 39 years, and I still don’t know crawfish.”

The torturous summer was widely blamed on an El Niño weather pattern. And while some in the crawfish industry have been reluctant to blame climate change, here in a state bombarded by powerful hurricanes, ice storms, wildfires and an ocean voraciously eating away at the coastline, there was another vivid display of nature’s volatility .

“Mother Nature had everything to do with it,” said Barry Toups, who owns a crawfish farm in Vermilion Parish.

Unlike many other farmers, Mr. Toups, 63, later turned to crawfish after working in maintenance for the local school board for 30 years. Still, he moved like an experienced hand when he checked his traps one afternoon in his flat-bottomed boat, which had a hydraulic outboard motor designed for water about 18 inches deep.

His fluid movement – ​​pulling the mesh nets out of the water, exchanging the old bait for a fresh piece of porgy – was interrupted only by the occasional water hose on top of a trap or a turtle in it. He dumped his catch on a metal grate on the boat with two chutes, one pointing to a bag and the other back to the pond.

“The little ones fall through,” said Mr. Toups, “and the big ones end up in the crawfish boil.”

He has insulated himself somewhat from the vagaries of the market by opening a bed-and-breakfast and taking tourists from far-flung places like France and Nova Scotia on what he calls “lobster excursions,” where for $75 (or 50 dollar if he spends the night), they have the opportunity to harvest crawfish.

“I figured out a way to get people to do my work,” he said, “and they love it!”

Mr. Stelly has his own ambitions, including expanding the radius where live crawfish can be delivered. He also thinks about his daughters. His eldest is studying agricultural business at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, with plans to bring what she learns back to the family business.

He wants to one day hand her a robust operation, but recent events have shaken his certainty.

“Right now, the future?” he said. “I really do not know.”

One morning last week, he navigated his pickup truck through the narrow, muddy paths that wound between his ponds. The view provided an overview of the reasons why the operation was not thriving: the engine for a pump that cost $22,000 and another $32,000 in fuel. A raccoon, one of the bandits who were extremely efficient at searching traps. A traditionally productive pond that yielded him very little.

Still, he noticed that while he was there, his phone wasn’t pressed to his ear. The migraine that haunted his mind had subsided. The warmth and breeze matched the balance of a beautiful day.

That horizon of swampy terrain, he said, had brought him more than just an income. It offered purpose, and now, when he needed it most, a measure of peace.

His phone lit up again.

A buyer from Arkansas inquired about his inventory and, like everyone else, complained about how tough the season had been.

“Hopefully it will change somewhat,” Mr. Stelly told him, his optimism replenished, if only slightly. “It’s coming.”