Freshwater Crawfish

duploelabs · 11-05-2011 2:21pm #1

Salivating reading this and I know they're found in our waters, does anyone know if they can be harvested on a grand scale?

CJhaughey · 11-05-2011 3:20pm

Austropotamobius pallipes
They are protected in our waters, There aren't a huge amount of them TBH they are under threat because of a number of issues. Water quality, introduced diseases among them.
While the UK struggles with escaped signal crayfish we don't have them here fortunately and so far we have been lucky to keep what are basically Iceage remnant populations.
There was a survey done a few years back and they found that lots of lakes that previously had populations no longer had crayfish present.
Sad really.

duploelabs · 11-05-2011 4:09pm

Dammit

Alun · 11-05-2011 4:17pm

It's a big thing in Sweden around August to hold a Kräftskiva, or crayfish party. The native freshwater crayfish are in pretty short supply there too, and fishing for them is restricted, so apparently most of them are imported from the US or Far East.

CJhaughey · 11-05-2011 8:23pm

Bah, TBH a good fistfull of proper Irish Nephrops are worth more than any of those little muddy gimps. Same thing but tastier and widely available.
The only reason that they eat those crawfish is that they can't get Prawns like ours at a reasonable price.
The trick is to cook them in boiling salty water, as soon as the water comes back to the boil take them out and plunge them into ice water, this stops the overcooking which can make them mushy.