Guide
Shellfish: two departments, two answers
Checked September 18, 2026 against the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Public Health.
On this coast, two departments have to agree before you eat what you dug, and they answer different questions on different pages. The tile keeps them apart on purpose, because the commonest way to get this wrong is to read one of them as if it were both.
| Who | What they decide |
|---|---|
| CDFW Fish and Wildlife | whether the season is open. A season, a closure, a Director’s order. This is permission to take. |
| CDPH Public Health | whether it is safe to eat. Biotoxin testing, the annual mussel quarantine, and warnings county by county. |
An open season is not a clean bill of health, and a lifted health warning does not open a season. Both have to say yes.
Why the tile is read by county
CDFW manages this coast as the Northern region, which is Del Norte and Humboldt and nothing further south. CDPH warns by county. So every town on this board is answered on its own county — Crescent City and Fort Dick on Del Norte, everything from Orick down to Shelter Cove on Humboldt — and the two counties can and do disagree.
They disagree right now. The razor clam fishery has been shut in Humboldt since May 2, 2024 for domoic acid, and it is open in Del Norte, where CDPH lifted the last warning on August 31, 2026. Twenty miles of coast apart, opposite answers.
The annual mussel quarantine
Every year CDPH quarantines sport-harvested mussels along the entire California coast, Oregon border to Mexican border, bays, inlets and harbours included. It normally runs May 1 through October 31, and CDPH can start it early or extend it. It covers only sport-harvested mussels: commercially grown mussels from certified companies are tested and are not part of it.
CDFW’s own regulations put it plainly while the quarantine stands: mussels should only be collected for non-consumptive uses, such as bait.
This tile never says mussels are safe — not even out of season. Asked whether sport-harvested mussels are safe when the quarantine is not in effect, CDPH’s own answer is no: never assume they are. The toxins can appear at any time of year, which is why CDPH tests all year round. So the tile says CLOSED inside the quarantine and CHECK outside it, and it will not print a green light on mussels on any date.
There is no way to tell by looking. The toxins do not change how a shellfish looks, smells or behaves, and cooking does not reliably destroy them.
Crab: which crab, and why it is shut in September
The crab row means Dungeness, because on this coast that is what the word means. Its closure is not a toxin closure at all — it is the season. Dungeness closed on July 31, 2026 and is scheduled to reopen on November 7, 2026.
That distinction is the reason this tile reads CDFW’s regulations page rather than their health advisories page. The advisories page is a list of toxin closures, and in September it said nothing about Dungeness crab whatever — because there is nothing toxic about it. A tile built on that page alone would have sent somebody crabbing eleven weeks early.
Rock crab is a different animal with a different answer. Its season is open. But CDPH warns against eating the viscera — the internal organs, the “butter” or “guts” — of rock crab taken anywhere from the California/Oregon border down to the Mendocino–Sonoma county line, which is this whole coast and then some. Clean crab before cooking. The tile carries that line beside the Dungeness answer rather than letting one crab stand in for both.
What CHECK means on this tile
Three words appear on a California shellfish row, and the third one is the honest one.
- CLOSED — CDFW has the season shut, or CDPH has a warning in force for your county, or both.
- OPEN — CDFW has the season open for the Northern region and CDPH has no warning in force for your county. It is still not advice to eat anything: ring the line below.
- CHECK — nobody has told us this is shut, and this tile cannot tell you it is open. It appears on mussels outside the quarantine months, and on any species the pages stopped answering for.
The tile reads CDPH’s notifications for the current year, which is how CDPH publishes them — this year in a table, earlier years as prose underneath. So an advisory standing since an earlier year may not be on the tile. That is exactly why a missing warning here leaves a row quiet instead of turning it green, and why the phone number below is on the tile at full size.
How this reading is dated
Neither page stamps itself. So the tile is dated by CDPH’s newest notification — a real published date, from the department whose job it is to publish when something changes. The trade is that a genuinely quiet fortnight, with nothing to announce, reads as out of date. When that happens the tile says so in as many words rather than going quiet, and sends you to the line.
Who to ring
| CDPH Shellfish Biotoxin Information Line quarantines and health advisories, recorded | 1-800-553-4133 |
| CDFW Domoic Acid Fishery Closure Information Line which fisheries are shut | (831) 649-2883 |
Paralytic shellfish poisoning can kill in under thirty minutes and there is no antidote. Early signs are tingling in the lips and tongue, which can start within minutes, spreading to the fingers and toes, then weakness and trouble breathing. Domoic acid poisoning brings vomiting, cramps, confusion and memory loss, usually within a day.
If you think you have eaten toxic shellfish and have any of these, get emergency medical care or call 911. Keep any shellfish that is left, refrigerated, so it can be tested.
Sources
- CDFW, Northern region ocean sport fishing regulations — the seasons the tile reads
- CDPH shellfish and seafood advisories — the warnings the tile reads
- CDFW health advisories and closures — the whole state’s toxin picture
- CDPH annual mussel quarantine
- CDPH recreational bivalve shellfish advisory map