Carol Richard says she learned how to make do with very little while cooking with her mother as a child. That was a long time ago. Now, in her current position as kitchen manager at The Common Grounds, she is once again learning how to stretch her food dollar because of the recent high seafood prices. “Right now I am buying shrimp with the head on because it is less expensive,” Richard says, tucked away in the kitchen of the Aquinas Center. “It is just time-consuming because I have to process it myself.”

Richard’s problems are not just with shrimp.

“I am not using oysters and some other things because they are just cost-prohibitive,” Richard says. “Some things that would have been the main ingredient are now just a small part.”

While some price increases are usually expected this time of year because of Lent, this year’s spikes are blamed mostly on the one-two punch of Katrina and Rita, storms that wiped out much of south Louisiana’s seafood industry.

“Even if some fishermen can get their boats in the water, where do they bring their catch?” Earl Melancon, distinguished service professor of biological sciences, said. “The ports were destroyed. It has been a big challenge, which has helped to raise the prices.”

Melancon said most of the oyster beds located on the eastern Louisiana coast, as well as the shrimping fleets, were destroyed during the storms.

If crawfish farms in the Acadian Parishes, where most local crawfish are harvested this time of year, were not destroyed during the storms, they were inundated with saltwater. Melancon says the saltwater intrusion killed many of the rice plants that the crawfish feed on.

“That is enough to keep prices up, right there,” Melancon says.

Wholesale crawfish prices have nearly doubled since last year, which has caused a drop in business at local seafood suppliers and restaurants.

“We are definitely not as busy as we were last year,” Tim Angelette, owner of Seafood Outlet on Canal Street, said. “I have to believe that it is because of the prices. The talk of the town is that (the prices of) crawfish are high.”

Angelette said he was selling boiled crawfish at about $2 a pound this time last year. His current price is closer to $3 a pound. He also says this year’s crawfish are much smaller. Since the season started, Seafood Outlet has seen fewer walk-ins and more customers calling to check prices before buying, Angelette said.

“We actually make more money when crawfish are low,” Angelette says. “The public thinks we are scalping them, but we are really not.”

There is little hope that the influx of wild crawfish from the Atchafalaya Basin later in the season will relieve prices. Dry northern weather has caused low river levels.

“River levels have not been that great,” Melancon says. “The higher the levels, the more habitat the crawfish have.”

Angelette does offer some relief to his budgeted yet seafood-starved customers by way of crabs. He says they are the cheapest he has seen during Lent in his 26 years of business.

“We are selling them for $8 a dozen, and they are really big right now,” Angelette says.