According to the Institute, American signal crayfish stocks have been on the increase, while numbers of the indigenous noble crayfish have remained steady.
Cool early summer weather meant that waters also remained cooler than normal, especially in larger lakes. As a result, crayfish catches are expected to fairly low at the beginning of the season. The same situation was seen last year, when catches reached their peak in late August and early September.
The crayfish plague that decimated the noble crayfish population in the past is still active, although it no longer causes the same level of losses. A new type carried by signal crayfish also effects noble stocks. About a dozen cases of crayfish plague a year have been reported in past years and infections are expected to stay at more or less the same level this year.
Crayfish catches are a significant source of extra income. The latest available statistics are from 2006, when there was a catch of 5.2 million signal crayfish and 1.6 million noble crayfish. That was double the number seen in 2004.
Retail sales of a million noble crayfish bring in more the 5 million euros, and the same number of signal crayfish, around 3 million euros. This is well above, for example, the value of professional catches of salmon in the Baltic Sea, which in 2008 were worth approximately one million euros.
