{"id":415940,"date":"2026-01-16T02:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T02:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/415940\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T02:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T02:44:10","slug":"north-queensland-redclaw-farmer-looks-to-science-to-meet-overwhelming-resturant-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/415940\/","title":{"rendered":"North Queensland redclaw farmer looks to science to meet overwhelming resturant demand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Freshwater crayfish farmer Nathan Cleasby says he cannot keep up with demand from restaurants all over Australia.<\/p>\n

Mr Cleasby, who bought his 20-hectare Townsville farm in 2023, said he was overwhelmed with summer demand for redclaw, despite the industry declining.<\/p>\n

“We can’t keep up, not even close \u2026 the demand is phenomenal,” Mr Cleasby said.<\/p>\n

He said he aspired to have the biggest redclaw farm in Australia.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Nathan Cleasby is focusing on research before scaling up his farm. (ABC News: Brooke Tindall)<\/p>\n

Mr Cleasby has 5.5 hectares of ponds but said he was working out the next step to increase production.<\/p>\n

Working with James Cook University and the CSIRO, he said he was focusing on sustainable feedstock and animal genetics to improve the survival rates of growing redclaw.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got the land, we’ve got the machinery, it’s all ready to go,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We just want to know what we’re doing before we start.”<\/p>\n

A struggling industry<\/p>\n

Redclaw crayfish are native to northern Queensland but a declared noxious aquatic species outside their native range because they out-compete other native yabbie species. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Queensland Department of Primary Industries’ 2023-24 Aquaculture Production Summary found redclaw production recorded by farmers had shrunk by 45.7 per cent from the previous year.<\/p>\n

James Cook University aquaculture expert Dean Jerry said redclaw was established as a “cottage” industry with small-scale farmers.<\/p>\n

“I think this has discouraged some new entrants to come into the industry, despite the biological potential of the animal itself to be a great product to scale,” Professor Jerry said.<\/p>\n

He said more long-term research was needed to ensure increasing production would be comparable to other aquaculture industries, such as prawns.<\/p>\n

“Quite often, for many new industries, projects are short and sweet, but they don’t sort of realise their potential impact because there is no continuation of the research,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Jerry said nutrition and genetics were the areas of interest for redclaw.<\/p>\n

“We do know a little bit about the nutrition of redclaw, but there’s still a lot of work to be done in that area and the production of the feeds that are cost-effective,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said demand had remained strong for the product.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Redclaw is increasingly popular in restaurants. (ABC News: Brooke Tindall)<\/p>\n

“There is certainly demand for this product and a lot of restaurants when they have the product they will want to put it on their menus,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It comes down to that scaling issue \u2014 having enough of the product being produced to regularly supply restaurants.”Popular on the menu<\/p>\n

Townsville fine dining chef Steele Lee, who features Mr Cleasby’s crayfish on his menu, said his customers were impressed with the species.<\/p>\n

“You can use the whole animal \u2014 the shells, the meat, it’s pretty exciting as a chef to be able to do so many different things with one animal,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said he had seen its popularity in fine-dining restaurants grow over the past few years.<\/p>\n

“It’s good to see it’s growing and getting its place on the menu,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Cleasby said the few producers still in the industry worked strongly together.<\/p>\n

“I think the demand is strong enough, the price point is really good, so hopefully we can turn the industry and start increasing production year on year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Freshwater crayfish farmer Nathan Cleasby says he cannot keep up with demand from restaurants all over Australia. Mr…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[188697,219488,64,63,138246,89064,134,13330,34100,219487,23687],"class_list":["post-415940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-aquaculture","tag-aquaculture-production-summary","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-crayfish","tag-department-of-primary-industries","tag-entertainment","tag-farming","tag-james-cook-university","tag-redclaw","tag-seafood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}