Crawfish

They were everywhere, when areas dried up, they migrated to water. You could pick up truck loads. Crawfish prices dropped to pennies, cause they were everywhere. They closed roads, cause nothing is as slick as squished crawdads. There should be some interesting stories to follow this, if its anything like 73. My older brother in Houston called me last night to help keep him updated on when the crawfish migration hits(he caters crawfish boils--lol).

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In 73 we picked 3 sacks off the ground with out a net or bait

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What about 1974? Was that a good crawfish season?

ABC tested the water in Memphis and found the Mississippi floodwaters contain toxins and fecal coliform bacteria, such as E.coli.

The question is whether this water is more toxic than the water in '73 that flooded the Atchafalaya Basin. If so, will it affect the crawfishing industry?

Heavy Metals in the Mississippi River

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Heavy metals are released to the Mississippi River from numerous sources. Typical sources are municipal wastewater-treatment plants, manufacturing industries, mining, and rural agricultural cultivation and fertilization. Heavy metals are transported as either dissolved species in water or as an integral part of suspended sediments. Heavy metals may be volatilized to the atmosphere or stored in riverbed sediments. Toxic heavy metals are taken up by organisms; the metals dissolved in water have the greatest potential of causing the most deleterious effects.
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Millions of tons of fertilizers and pesticides are applied to croplands every year. Cultivated soils can become enriched with toxic metals associated with these applications. Although the concentrations may vary between specific formulations, many of these fertilizers contain chromium, copper, iron, manganese, nickel, and zinc. Selected pesticides use heavy metals such as mercury as an integral component. During the late spring and early summer, after fertilizers and pesticides have been applied, the runoff from rain flushes these contaminants into the Mississippi River.
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Uranium dissolved in the Mississippi River comes, in large part, from phosphate fertilizers applied to croplands.
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Copper dissolved in the Mississippi River comes mostly from industrial and municipal wastewaters.
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The transport of dissolved uranium downriver depends on water discharge as well as on the concentration of the element in solution. Transports usually are greater during high-flow periods ...

The transport of dissolved copper in the Mississippi River, like that of dissolved uranium, varies directly with the water discharge.

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