Christmas prawn prices skyrocket in Australia

SYDNEY - When most people think of Christmas lunch, they probably imagine roasted turkey and goose by a snow-capped window. But in Australia's hot Summer sun, fresh seafood is the traditional holiday feast and prawns are always a mainstay on every family's table.

But due to the east coast of Australia's ongoing drought, the price of prawns this Christmas have set skyrocketed.

"It's a well-established fact that when you have drought on land, you have drought in water," Professional Fishermen's Association CEO Tricia Beatty told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday.

"When you go to the land and see a farmer and his crops, you can see how they are directly impacted by the drought."

Although it's much more difficult to see, Beatty explained a similar impact is being felt by Australia's commercial fishing sector.

"No one has closed, but it's been a really hard time for us as an industry," she said.

It's also likely to be a hard time for consumers as well, with the price of school prawns rising from about 12 Australian dollars ($8.3) per kilogram at the start of the season last year to over 30 Australian dollars ($20.7) per kilogram this year.

With no fresh rainwater available to flush the east coast's river systems, a surge in salinity levels has drastically affected the size and scale of the catch.

"There are many processes in the estuary that need fresh water because it brings in critical nutrient elements that run off the catchment," University of New South Wales Professor Iain Suthers, who studied the phenomenon following Australia's millennium drought in 2000, said.

"The most direct importance for rain, for both juvenile eastern king prawns and for adult school prawns is that the rain encourages and flushes the growing prawns out into the coastal ocean."

But despite the downturn, a spokesperson for the Sydney Fish Market said in the next 36 hours before Christmas, around 100,000 Sydneysiders are still expected to buy over 700 tonnes of seafood from the venue, including 130 tonnes of prawns.