Harvesting Shellfish on Public Beaches

With a salt water canal at its center and a myriad of lakes, waterfalls, and streams surrounding the inner fingers of Puget Sound – this area is rich in aquaculture andwater related opportunities. It’s time to start planning your outdoor adventures!

If you harvest clams or oysters, keep them on ice or eat them soon after harvest. It is best practice to read posted warnings or call the Marine Toxins/PSP Hotline: 1-800-562-5632 for a recorded message. Visit the ShellfishSafety Map at doh.wa.gov/shellfishsafety. There is also a mobile friendlyversion of the map at doh.wa.gov/shellfishmobilemap. Clam and oysterseason are beach specific and may change annually.Always Check BEFORE you dig.

South Puget Sound

Hope Island State Park

Boat access only. Oysters are incidental at this site but clamming can be quite good. This beach is a very popular place to dig for geoducks. A tide lower than -2.0 feet is best for geoducks. Most of the oysters are on the west side of the island near the south end. The season only opens for the month of May.

North Bay

Abundant Manila clams and an enhanced oyster bed. The season here is short and locked into May and September only under terms of a shoreline agreement.

Oakland Bay

Tideland Open year-round, good shore access with parking. Manila clams and oysters can be found here.

Hood Canal

Belfair State Park

Excellent beach for oysters and Manila clams can be found here.

Potlatch State Park

Open seasonally, oysters and a variety of clam species. Clams, mussels and oysters open April 1 through August 31

Lilliwaup State Park

Open year-round, excellent for oysters and native clams. Clamming is difficult due to the cobble substrate, but the beach is abundant with butter clams.

Rendsland Creek

Open year-round, excellent for oysters and a variety of clams can be found here although not in great densities.

Twanoh State Park

Open year-round for oysters and seasonally for clams, check season before harvesting. Good beach for Manila clams.

DNR 33, 47 & 48

Boat access only beaches, open year-round for clams and oysters.

Eagle Creek

Open year-round for oysters and seasonally for clams, check seasons before harvesting. This is an excellent oyster beach.

Triton Cove State Park

There is very little clam resource on this beach, but there are good numbers of year-round oysters.

Dosewallips State Park

This is an excellent beach for clams. The best areas are in the mid-upper tidal zone in mixed sand and gravel substrate. Productive digging is also found around and among the oysters, an area often overlooked by harvesters.

Please take care not to cover oysters with sand and mud as this will potentially kill the oysters.

Why is it required to shuck oysters on the beach at public tidelands?

Oysters taken on public tidelands must be shucked on the beach and the shells left behind for the following conservation-basedreasons according to the Washington DFW website, wdfw.wa.gov.

Another concern is that removing large Pacific oyster shells removes tiny oysters which are attached to the larger shells. Thus, removing a legal limit of 18 oysters may actually remove three to five times that number of oysters - young oysters which would otherwise remain on the beach and grow to edible size.

Removing oyster shells from beaches containing Japanese oyster drills (an oyster predator) may result in the inadvertent spread of these predators. Sport harvesters are unlikely to recognize these tiny predatory snails - or their egg cases - which attach to oyster shells and can survive long periods away from water. Once shucked, these shells often end up being returned to a nearby beach by well-meaning harvesters, potentially increasing the spread of the Japanese oyster drill in Washington by depositing the “hitchhikers” on a new beach.

Many public beaches already have these tiny predators, but the goal is to minimize the spread to other uninfected beaches. The surest way to prevent oyster drills or their eggs leaving an infected beach is to require oyster shells to remain on the beach.

So head to the beach and get shucking! You will need a shellfish license, an oyster knife and gloves. Adults may shuck a child's daily limit so long as the child participates in some way in the gathering. For illustrated details on two popular shucking methods, visit wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/shellfish.