As the summer snack has become a large industry, consumption of crayfish has seen skyrocketing growth in China. Farmers raised 1.4 million tonnes of crayfish last year to satisfy China's enormous appetite.

Data shows that Chinese people ate around 268.5 billion yuan (39.1 billion U.S. dollars) worth of crayfish in 2017, up 83 percent from the year before. And the market size is estimated to have exceeded 300 billion yuan in 2018.

The latest report from online food ordering platform Meituan shows that crayfish orders in the first five months of 2019 have already reached 77 percent of last year's total. Over 140,000 new restaurants crowded into the crayfish industry in 2018, and the trade volume tripled from the previous year.

Moreover, mid-sized crayfish are selling at around 36 to 40 yuan per kilo now. In April, they were fetching 100 yuan per kilo, according to reports from price monitoring websites.

"What we've seen is a 40-percent increase in supply, so the price at the wholesale end drops substantially," said Zhang Lin, store manager of Crayfish Restaurant in Shanghai's Pudong.

The good times and low prices may not last though. Experts say that crayfish need to live in cold water, and as summer temperatures start to soar, many crayfish won't survive being transported from farms in Anhui, Hunan or Jiangsu, especially if they're destined for the warmer areas of southern China.