Talking about a redclaw revolution, baby!
For years it's been considered the poor cousin to its more high-profile seafood stablemates such as lobsters and prawns.
But now the humble redclaw crayfish is making a comeback as the industry overcomes some of the significant stumbling blocks that have thwarted its progress.
"In the 90s, we had lots of farmers," John Stevenson, of the Queensland Crayfish Farmers Association, explained.
"Unfortunately, some of them didn't approach the game as a business. They thought they could make a living out of it or make money out of it approaching it like a hobby. That added to the overall decline in the output.
"People who are still in the industry are making a very good living out of it and have been doing so for a very long time."
Queensland redclaw has become a popular mainstay on restaurant menus but the industry is struggling to meet demand
Today, there's only about a dozen commercial farmers left, producing 50 tonnes of redclaw annually.
It barely meets existing demand for Queensland redclaw, let alone the growing appetite among high-end restaurant diners and select consumers for the seafood delicacy.
Industry stalwarts like John Stevenson and a handful of others have had to overcome enormous challenges and often devastating stock losses as they learned the lessons of redclaw farming by trial and error.
But now, the results of research projects driven by James Cook University's Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture and supported by Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation are paving the way for a "revolutionary" new era in redclaw production.
Mr Stevenson says it's an exciting time to be involved as a new, professional industry emerges from the disappointment and failures of the 1990s.
He says for the first time in more than a decade, redclaw is being seen as a viable option for prospective farmers.
"We were probably a bit slow off the mark in hindsight. But you've got to remember we're a very young industry.
"The first redclaw were farmed in 1988 so we've only been going for 30 years against other animals that have been farmed for hundreds of years."
Rob Allnutt travelled all the way from the Adelaide River, south of Darwin, to attend the 'Redclaw Revolution' conference in Cairns last week, and is one of about 30 people considering entering the industry.
Mr Allnutt says it's still early days, but he definitely liked what he learned about the advances being made in redclaw farming techniques.
"They've had the (past) failures... but I think with the research being done here in Queensland that there might be opportunity to kickstart it all again, because I think it does have a big future, aquaculture, something that looks relatively simple as redclaw may be able to go forward in leaps and bounds.
"The next step is going home and putting all the information together and probably putting a business plan together and seeing where I go with that."
A major catalyst for growth in the largely North Queensland industry has been the establishment of a commercial hatchery on the Atherton Tableland, run by Colin and Ursula Valverde.
"It's about specialisation, it's about controlling the genetics, it's about giving the best possible health status to the craylings that we deliver to other farmers for grow out," Mr Valverde said.
"Consistency of size, the farmer now knows exactly what he's putting into a pond so he can predict all his feed electricity, water inputs and better predict what he's going to get at the end of it, rather than guessing all the time."
The selective breeding program is an example of how far the redclaw industry has come in recent years, he says.
"It actually takes a lot of work for an animal that you can't tag the ear on it and follow its bloodline.
"So, you've really got to confine the animals and you need a lot of infrastructure, a lot of ponds, and our industry just hasn't been big enough to really do that. So for us to get the selective breeding project working, it really took a combined effort of all the Queensland crayfish farmers to work together and make this happen.
"We still have a long way to go, but I'm very optimistic about the potential of redclaw farming."
Many Queenslanders have grown up catching and boiling up their own redclaw, but commercially the product is confined mainly to high-end restaurants and consumers.
Colin Valverde says he'd like that to change, but first the industry must meet the challenge of continuity of supply.
"We'd like people to be able to go into a fish shop and buy redclaw as well and take them home," he said.
"It is the fundamental problem of our whole industry. We need to produce more; hence this conference.
"We want to encourage more people to grow them, we want to encourage existing hobbyists to get serious about it and expand and start producing them, because we're being phoned up every day saying 'Can I have crayfish, can I have crayfish?' and it just hurts to keep saying 'No. I don't have them'."
Source: ABC News, 31 October 2013
