Virile Crayfish
Well, this wasn’t exactly in the same league as a Bigfoot or UFO sighting report, but it was still pretty darned interesting!
I grabbed my camera and notebook and headed downtown to meet Don and check out this critter.
It sure looked like a baby lobster…it was a good 4 inches long, with a dark red-brown shell and blue claws. It was quite feisty, too.
The mystery was, how did it end up on the sidewalk, alive and walking? Having possession of a baby lobster is illegal….did someone find it in a batch of live lobsters and toss it out?
I didn’t immediately think that it was a crayfish, as the crayfish I was familiar with from down in the states were all much smaller than this and a light tan colour. And, if it was a crayfish, how did it get up on Perth Main Street from the river? The bank is very steep and covered with rock fill.
The puzzle was solved the next day when Rick St Peter told us that he sees these “fresh water crabs” all the time down at Beechwood Dam.
A bit of googling revealed that this crustacean is a Virile Crayfish. It turns out that they make good bass bait and they grow up to 6 inches long.
They are an invasive species in some waterways, but apparently they’ve migrated into New Brunswick naturally.
And their name says it all, doesn’t it? They are big, bold crayfish and they quickly take over and displace native crayfish when they get released outside of their natural range.
As we were discussing crayfish with people we learned that Ron Gaunce had just found one of these large crayfish walking across the road in front of the Legion in Perth. There’s a brook just below, which one would guess is where it came from, but still, two crawdads in one week just wandering around on the streets, out of water…what’s up with that?
They are sold as bait and shipped to bait and tackle shops around North America. Sometimes people dump their bait buckets when they get done fishing, and in some cases, the crayfish were aquarium pets that got released into the wild. There are strict rules and regulations regarding invasive species because of the destruction they can cause and the damage they do to the indigenous species. I can sure say that the little crawdads I used to catch in New York state wouldn’t have stood a chance in a fight with this critter.
It seemed like a crustacean this size would make good eating, or that it would have been fished at some point in New Brunswick’s history but I couldn’t find any mention of it online.
Crayfish are generally edible. Louisiana, for instance, is famous for their crawdad boils but the crayfish they use are a smaller species. Spicy boiled crawdads served with butter are indeed tasty.
But I’m not entirely sure that a crayfish out of the St John River is something I’d want on my own plate!
