Another high-water victim

• By JOE MACALUSO
• Advocate outdoors writer
• Published: May 4, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 p.m.

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Ever notice that good years for crawfish and strawberries usually turn out to be below-average shrimp years in Louisiana?

With the Atchafalaya Spillway, famous for its Belle River crawfish, at its highest in 35 years, the crawfish are big, fat and plentiful. That’s not supposition: St. Thomas More Parish Festival’s Friday night crawfish boil was proof positive as were the three other crawfish feasts laid out last week.

Cool-to-warm days with just-right rainfall — a touch on the dry side if you please — add to those all too pleasing aromas of fresh Louisiana strawberries and boiling crawfish.

Moreover, with projections of the Mississippi River, hence the Atchafalaya River, remaining high through the end of this month, it looks like we’re going to have crawfish.

That leaves the question of the spring inshore shrimp season, the dates of which were set during Thursday’s Wildlife and Fisheries Commission meeting.

The state is divided into three zones. Zone II’s opener is noon, May 12. This area runs from South Pass on the Mississippi River to the western shoreline of Vermilion Bay. Zones I and III will open at noon June 2.

Both dates come after the days state marine biologists said their data shows today’s small, juvenile brown shrimp in those estuaries will grow to a size when at least 50 percent of them will weigh out at 100 to the pound.

Zone I runs from the Louisiana-Mississippi line to South Pass. Zone III takes in the inside waters from Vermilion Bay to the Louisiana-Texas line.

Marty Bourgeois, the state’s Shrimp Study leader, delivered the news to the commission. During the past four months, state biologists measured things such as water temperature, salinity levels (shrimp need at least 10 parts per thousands salt to grow; sea water is 33 parts per thousand), rainfall, tidal movements and ranges, the movement of shrimp into the state’s vast estuaries and their growth rates from March into the last week of April.

The environmental factors are pointing to a below-average spring season. Brown shrimp make up most of the coming season’s catch. White shrimp dominate the fall inshore season, which opens in mid August.

Blame the highest Mississippi River in 35 years for that projection.

Bourgeois said the river’s discharge, measured at 1.25 million cubic feet per second around here, is pumping cold freshwater into several shrimp producing areas in Zone I and the eastern areas of Zone 2.

The Atchafalaya River is doing the same in the western Areas of Zone 2 like Cote Blanche and Vermilion bays.