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Guide

Shellfish closures, explained

Checked September 13, 2026 against the Washington Department of Health and the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The Shellfish tile repeats what the Washington Department of Health says about the beach you are reading for. This page explains what a closure is, why cooking does not help, and why the only safe habit is to check on the day you dig.

You cannot see, smell or taste a marine biotoxin, and cooking will not remove it. The Department of Health puts it in one sentence: “Cooking or freezing doesn’t kill or remove toxins. The toxins are part of the shellfish meat.” The only way to know is a laboratory test, which is what a closure is telling you about.

Check on the day. Not the week before.

The Department of Health’s own instruction is exact about the timing: “Check the shellfish safety map for beach closures and advisories on the day of harvest.” A beach that was open on Friday can be closed on Saturday, because a closure follows a test result, and results arrive when they arrive.

Three ways to check, all the department’s own:

One honest gap: the department does not publish how often the map is refreshed, so this page does not claim a figure. What it does say is to look on the day.

The three biotoxins

All three are produced by algae the shellfish eat, and all three concentrate in the meat.

Each of the department’s three pages ends with the same sentence in different words: the toxin “isn’t destroyed by cooking or freezing.”

Two different kinds of closure, both shown as Closed

A biotoxin closure is about the shellfish. Algal toxin has been measured in the meat above the level the department allows, and only a laboratory test can find it or clear it.

A pollution closure is about the water. The department: “Floods, sewage spills, and other pollution events can create conditions that make shellfish unsafe for human consumption. When this happens we impose an emergency (temporary) closure on the affected area.” Underneath those sit permanent classifications of each growing area — Approved, Conditionally Approved, Restricted, Prohibited — from sanitary surveys of the shoreline.

Both reach the map as Closed, and for a harvester the instruction is the same either way. The department does not set the two side by side on any one page; this comparison is assembled from two of its pages, and is worth knowing mainly so that “the water looks fine” never reads as an argument.

Vibrio, which is a summer problem and a handling problem

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a naturally occurring bacterium in salt and estuarine water — not an algal toxin, and not something a closure usually covers. It multiplies in warmth, so the risk runs through the summer. Diarrhoea, cramps, nausea, vomiting, headache, fever and chills, usually 12 to 24 hours after eating, sometimes up to four days.

Unlike the biotoxins, this one you can largely defeat by handling, and the department’s advice is practical: harvest as early in the receding tide as you can; do not take shellfish that have been sitting in the sun for more than an hour; chill them promptly; do not store them in standing water; and cook them properly, especially in summer. The safety map carries its own Vibrio High-Risk Area overlay.

Crab is the one the board reads twice

Crab is on this tile because the health department tests it, but a crab closure and a crab season are different permissions from different departments, and only one of them is about toxin. The department’s own map draws the line for you: its “All Species” closure means “clams, geoduck, scallops, mussels, oysters, snails and other invertebrates (not crab or shrimp)”, and it keeps “All Species including Crab” as a separate value for when crab really is shut.

So a beach classification — Approved, Conditionally Approved, Unclassified — is a statement about that tideland and the filter feeders growing in it. It is not a statement about crab, which are taken out in the water. On this board only a closure that names crab closes crab.

The other half is Fish and Wildlife’s, and in Puget Sound it is the half that usually decides. Crabbing there is not open all year: the department opens each Marine Area for a stretch of weeks, on named days of the week — Thursdays through Mondays in most areas, Sundays and Mondays only off Seattle and Vashon (Marine Areas 10 and 11) — and closes it again, announcing the summer dates in June and the winter dates in September. On the outer coast it is the other way round. Crabbing never closes there; only the pot does, for part of the autumn, and other gear stays legal all year. The board reads the season for your own Marine Area and prints it under the word, with the dates and the days.

Which crab: three species may be kept anywhere in Washington — Dungeness, red rock and Tanner — and the department’s seasons and closures cover them alike. Everything else is closed to harvest the year round. Where a rule singles out one species, the board says which.

One habit the health department asks for whatever the map says: gut the crab and throw away the “butter” before cooking, and do not reuse the cooking liquid. Toxin concentrates in the viscera.

Who decides what

Two agencies, and the map says so itself: “Washington shellfish resources are managed by both the DOH (safety & water quality) and WDFW (harvest regulations).” The Department of Health closes a beach because of what is in the shellfish or the water. The Department of Fish and Wildlife decides seasons, limits and licences. A beach can be biologically safe and still closed to harvest, or open to harvest and closed for toxin. The board shows the health status; the season is a separate question, and for razor clams it has a guide of its own.

A few of the health department’s beaches are Fish and Wildlife’s preserves, and there the harvest rule wins. Saltar’s Point at Steilacoom is the plainest case: the health department rates the tideland open, and it is the town’s conservation area, “closed to fishing for, harvesting, and possession of fish and shellfish” all year. The same is true of Titlow Beach in Tacoma, Keystone by the Coupeville ferry, Brackett’s Landing at Edmonds, Saltwater State Park and the two Des Moines parks, and Seattle’s beach preserves at Carkeek, Golden Gardens, Discovery Park and Lincoln Park, where the closure runs from high tide down to minus 4.5 feet. On those eleven tidelands the board prints Closed in Fish and Wildlife’s name, says what the health department rates the water beside it, and names the nearest tideland you may lawfully dig instead. They are matched beach by beach from the department’s own list, and three that share a name with a mapped beach are deliberately left off it because the preserve is below low water or on another shore. A preserve is a rule about the beach, not about crab in the water beyond it, so it never decides the crab word.

One more limit worth stating: the map does not cover everything. Its own legend says “Not all beaches are mapped, call your local health department or district.”

Sources