Crawfish-harvesting robots? Also, Tropical Storm Grace follows Fred

The Advocate's Top Headlines

with Matthew Albright | Assistant metro editor

Good morning! We've got a great mix of fun, fascinating and important stories for your morning reading today. Check them out:

Crawfish robots?

It takes a lot of backbreaking work to harvest the millions of pounds of crawfish that end up spilled across newspaper across Louisiana. The farmers have to haul up trap after trap, manually emptying the contents, replenishing the bait and throwing them back in the water.

A team of LSU undergraduates — including one who grew up doing all that work on his family farm — think they have a better way. They've developed a robotic arm that does the hard labor.

Read all about how it works and how it could be used in this story.

Watching the tropics

It looks like Tropical Storm Fred won't end up doing much to Louisiana — maybe just some modest rain and wind to the east of New Orleans. But Tropical Storm Grace is on its way, and the current track suggests it might end up heading towards us.

When big storms are on the radar, we keep it on our homepage, so you can always check in on the latest.

Enforcing LSU's COVID rules

Thousands of students will return to LSU's campus in the coming weeks, and some are skeptical the university is going to be able to enforce its COVID rules. School officials acknowledge it's logistically impossible for them to check every student every day to make sure they're following the protocol, but they're still urging people to get vaccinated or regularly tested.

Read details of the plan and the hurdles to enforcing it in this story.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!