HATTIESBURG, Miss. (WHLT) – Crawfish prices are starting to drop after last summer’s drought led to near-record high costs.

The Crawfish App, which averages the prices from more than 800 crawfish vendors, estimates the price per pound of boiled crawfish is $7.49 or $8.99 for live crawfish. That’s compared to more than $13.00 per pound back in January.

Elvin LeFebvre, the owner of Triangle Seafood and Po-boys in Hattiesburg, said they’ve seen a steady drop in prices over the last month, but they’re not receiving as many crawfish as usual.

We had a drop the week of Mardi Gras. The price had come down. We just had another dollar-per-pound drop this week on crawfish. As of today, they’re $6.99 per pound live or $5.49 boiled,” he said.

Mark Shirley, Aquaculture and Coastal Resources Specialist at the LSU AgCenter, said crawfish farmers are seeing a small increase in harvesting, but it’s only about 15% of the normal catch.

“There’s just not the numbers of crawfish in the ponds to be able to harvest. They’re harvesting maybe 100 acres or more just to get one sack of crawfish and that’s kind of the average across the board. There are a few smaller ponds that are catching better, but a lot of the larger acres, they’re running thousands of traps just to catch a few crawfish,” Shirley explained.

He does not anticipate crawfish prices to drop much further this season, but he does expect just enough supply.