Opinion: California should follow Nevada’s lead on crayfish
By Stuart Leavenworth, Sacramento Bee
They go by several different names: Crayfish, crawfish, crawdads, yabbies, mudbugs.
Whatever you call them, there are about 220 million of these crustaceans bathing in Lake Tahoe, where they apparently are adding to the algae growth that clouds North America’s largest alpine lake.
Some scientists want to reduce these numbers, and for that there is an easy solution. If California and Nevada were to transplant some Cajuns to Tahoe, the crayfish population would be diminished in a few months.
Instead, as Carlos Alcalá reported in The Bee, Nevada has just issued its first permit for commercial harvesting of crayfish in that state’s waters of Lake Tahoe. The company granted the permit, Tahoe Lobster Co., hopes to supply restaurants looking for a local source of what French gourmands call écrevisse.
So should California follow Nevada’s lead and permit commercial harvesting of Tahoe crayfish? I say: Laissez les bon temps rouler.