AN OVERVIEW OF THE STATUS OF FRESH-WATER CRAWFISH CULTURE

Freshwater crawfish are cultured throughout the world. There are 3 tax onomic families of crawfish including the Astacidae and Cambaridae in the northern hemisphere and the Parastacidae in the southern hemispher e. There are over 400 species, but widespread commercial aquaculture i s limited to no more than 10 species including 3 astacids, Astacus ast acus Linnaeus, 1758, Astacus leptodactylus Eschscholtz, 1823, and Paci fastacus leniusculus (Dana 1852); 4 cambarids, Orconectes immunis (Hag en 1870), Procambarus acutus acutus (Chard 1852), Procambarus clarkii (Girard 1852), and Procambarus zonangulus Hobbs and Hobbs, 1990; and 3 (4?) parastacids, Cherax albidus (Riek 1951)/Cherax destructor Clark, 1936, Cherax quadricarinatus (Clark 1936), and Cherax tenuimanus (Cla rk 1936). The most important species is P. clarkii which accounts for about 90% of the 60-70,000 tons of crawfish cultured annually. While a ll crawfish species can be cultured intensively, the basic production methods involves establishment of perpetuating populations in monocult ure pond systems or self-propagating populations in ricefields. Two fo rms of semi-intensive crawfish culture have been commercially viable o n a small scale. These semi-intensive systems include breeding hatchli ng crawfish for stocking ponds and producing soft-shell crawfish using pond grown crawfish.