Freshwater crayfish: the forgotten invaders wreaking havoc across Africa

originally posted by: MichiganSwampBuck
In the Greats Lakes there is a problem with an invasive Rusty Crayfish. I like eating Crawdads, but since I don't know how to tell the difference between a native and a rusty, I haven't in a while. But yea, good eats.

Try em out! I have tried a few fish considered garbage fish and when prepared right, for me it was brined and smoked they were delicious!

I think the issue is that the crayfish (however delicious) are ruining more valuable crops like rice.

I'm not sure what the process would be to rid s rice paddy of crawfish other than to eat them or poison them; but I'm sure they would eat the crop before you ate them, our the crop would be poisoned as well?

Texas Monthly

Jim Gossen remembers those days, and as chairman of Louisiana Sysco Seafood, he’s been an integral part in bringing about the cultural shift. Despite selling the company to Sysco a few years ago, the Lafayette native still runs the company he founded in 1972. Gossen moved to Houston in 1975, because, as he says, that was “where the market was.” Houston didn’t know it then, but Gossen, through his involvement in pioneering Cajun-style restaurants such as Don’s, Willie G’s, and the Magnolia Bar & Grill and events like the Spring Crawfish Festival, has changed the way Houstonians (and by extension, all Texans) eat forever.

At around the same time, crawfish farming was finding its legs in Louisiana, and in some rice-growing parts of Texas too. Rice farmers realized that by flooding their fields post-harvest they could get not one but two crops from their land: one animal, and one grain, the latter subsidized by the government, the former sometimes sold for cash at the roadside. From the 1960s to today, managed crawfish ponds increased fourteen-fold, from about 10,000 acres to 144,000. Gossen estimates that less than 10 percent of all crawfish consumed are now harvested from swamps, the way virtually all of them had been when he was a youth.

It would not be very hard to sell them bugs.

Even if shipping overseas at first.





The Advocate

As Michigan grapples with a never-before-seen invasion of red swamp "crayfish" threatening cities' infrastructures and ecosystems, mudbug experts from Lafayette have organized a Cajun culture lesson delivered in the way only Louisianians know how — a party. The event, organized by Lafayette Travel and set for Saturday afternoon in Vicksburg, Michigan, is intended to introduce Michiganders to Lafayette and its beloved delicacy.

a reply to: Atsbhct

Never under estimate humans ability to overfish a species into near extinction numbers.

A better effort needs to made to harvest them.

a reply to: ElGoobero

There are a lot of invasive plants and animals that actually taste good and to think we have so many hungry people on earth.

Kudzu is totally edible! (The leaves, vine tips, flowers, and roots are edible)

dandelions, not only edible, but so so healthy, natures medicine, such a shame we don't realize what is right under our feet!

The curly part of forest ferns are not only edible but worth a small fortune to Asians.

Crawdads, hello can you say mini-lobster!!!

You gotta give back to nature what has been taken.

Seek to achieve a balance.

Seeker1963, I just watched a PBS TV program about invasive species in the Great Lakes. Apparently some guy down in Illinois is commercially fishing the Asian carp that is threatening to enter the Great Lakes and processing them into a food product. He nets so many that he has significantly reduced their numbers in some rivers where they were a big problem.

And I agree, a number of fish that are considered garbage by fishermen are good when smoked. As a kid we used to go out around this time of year and spear spawning sucker fish by the hundred. They are good to eat after smoking or canning. Pressure cooked or canned makes the numerous bones soft enough to eat. They aren't the garbage fish like other bottom feeders, mostly they eat plants and bugs, not dead crap like carp and catfish. Although there is a market for catfish and southern folks, along with Jewish people, eat carp as well.

I used to kill any drum fish (AKA Sheep's head) I caught until someone told me how to prepare them. It tastes just like lobster or crab meat. Almost any "garbage" fish can be used as animal feed or fertilizer at any rate. I imagine that they could find some use for Zebra mussel shells at the very least, perhaps used as an industrial product.

If the UN says eating bugs are a good source of protein and healthy to eat, then most invasive plants and animals surely are good too. Let people harvest them without permit or license and they will disappear soon enough, just ask the passenger pigeons, uh wait, they went extinct.

We call them Yabbies here in Australia.
be found in any farm dam or body of water available.
When we were kids we'd get a length of cotton, tie a bit of meat on one end and a stick to the other end, push the stick in the mud at the dams edge and wait for a bite. Really good way to pass a lazy afternoon. One of my friends mum would batter the yabby meat and whip up a honey sauce(Chinese honey chicken style)to go on top, absolutely divine!.
I remember too the men in one of my aboriginal neighbour/mates family would rip of the tail and once it was eaten they'd happily(and noisily!) suck the guts and stuff right out of the body, *shudders* talk about a gross out lol. Fantastic people though, they'd often cook up a big feast(pig on a spit, kangaroo in a firepit etc) and everyone and anyone was welcome to join in, even ate goanna on occasion.
The big running joke was "you white fellas, to you everything (bush tucker meat)tastes like chicken! Haha". The funny thing is to me it did lol, goanna tastes like stringy chicken covered in sand