NEW ORLEANS — There's some question as to what impact the Morganza Spillway opening will have on the crawfish supply.
As we're well into crawfish season, the orders at Seither's Seafood in Harahan are coming in hot.
"The quality and quantity have been awesome," said owner/chef Jason Seither. "This has been one of the best crawfish seasons, it's been great for us."
But the season has kept owners, like Seither, on their toes -- first with the Bonnet Carre Spillway opening.
"We were really worried about when the spillway started opening because it'll affect the crabs in Lake Pontchartrain and the shrimp and that's where we get a lot of our product from," Seither said. "But so far, so good."
Now with Morganza opening, there's more curiosity than concern over what will happen.
"It's the end of the season, we got maybe a month or so left," said Seither. "If this Morganza affects it to where we can't get crawfish anymore, I guess we'll just put some more shrimps and crab on the platter."
"This is probably not of any serious threat to our crawfish supply going forward," said Dr. Greg Lutz.
Lutz, a LSU AgCenter professor, says some farms though may go underwater.
"Whether they'll be okay or not just depends on how quick the water goes back down," he said. "If it goes back down soon enough, they can still have time to get all the wild fish out of their pond and get a crop planted. But if the water stays up too long, they're going to lose the crawfish they've established out there and it'll be too late to find any to restock."
Also wild fish could be a problem if flooding occurs.
"This water is going to be full of fish like carp, bream, and buffalo, all kinds of stuff," he said. "And when they get into that crawfish pond it's like a smorgasbord."
The wild crawfish population may also be impacted, but by how much is unknown.
"It's difficult to say what we're going to see in the basin but on a typical year the basin only makes up 15 percent of the crawfish that reaches our consumers," Lutz said. "There's no way to know ahead of time and it's probably not going to be a big impact on the overall supply but if it's your farm that goes underwater that's a big deal."
For now it's just a waiting game. Many though interested to see what this historic event brings.
"I mean, you never know what's going to happen," said Seither. "It definitely is going to affect our fisheries one way or another, but I mean, I just kind of roll with the punches with whatever we can get."