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Widespread red-tide warning puts shellfish harvest on hold

PUGET SOUND

By Angela D. Smith, Sun Staff

Shellfish harvesting is banned on the entire east side of Kitsap County, as well as much of central Puget Sound.

Health department workers found high levels of paralytic shellfish poison commonly known as "red tide" in all species of clams, mussels and oysters.

It's the first new closure of the year and one of the most widespread in several years.

It includes every beach and body of water from Foulweather Bluff to the Pierce County line, including all of Bainbridge Island. In east Puget Sound, closed are the southern half of Snohomish County, all of King County and much of Pierce County, including all of Vashon Island.

Most beaches in Hood Canal are unaffected, though Port Gamble, Discovery Bay, Kilisut Harbor and Mystery Bay are closed to butter clam harvests.

No commercial operations are affected. However, some geoduck tracts could be closed in the next two weeks, said Frank Cox, marine biotoxin coordinator with the state Department of Health.

Most years, shellfish bans are announced a few at a time, but toxins reached high levels so quickly this summer that the Department of Health decided to close a wider swath, said Shawn Ultican with Kitsap County Health District.

The threshold for closure is 80 micrograms of toxin per 100 grams of shellfish. Some samples collected Monday had as much as 24 times that amount. Mussels in Kingston contained 1,981 micrograms.

More than 1,000 micrograms can cause serious illness, though no deaths have been recorded in the state since 1942, Cox said.

People who eat contaminated shellfish can suffer numbness of the lips and tongue, nausea, vomiting and, if they eat enough, muscle weakness and difficulty breathing.

Warm weather and a mix of nutrients creates a fertile environment for microscopic plankton that produce the toxin. Filter-feeding shellfish that eat the plankton can build up the toxin in their tissue.

Experts say people shouldn't be afraid to go in the water.

"You could swim through a bloom of this toxin-producing plankton or even swallow some of that water (without being hurt)," Ultican said.

Most shellfish will purge their systems of the toxin within several weeks after a bloom is complete, but some, like butter clams, can hold it up to a year.

SHELLFISH NEWS