The shellfish harvest at the Olympic National Park Pacific coast will be closed to shellfish harvesters on saturday because they have found Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning, or PSP, in the shellfish. The coastline, which is 73.3 miles long, was supposed to be open for shellfish harvesting on saturay but will be postponed until further notice, and only the costline is closed , the southern area contains more toxin than the rest of the park.

PSP levels at the southern beaches are being closely monitored by the state departments of Fish & Wildlife and Health. Dan Ayres, the manager of shellfish at the Department of Fish&Wildlife says: "We will certainly be testing razor clams for both PSP and domoic acid"."Razor clams don’t seem to accumulate as much PSP as they do domoic acid. However, there have been razor clam closures due to PSP.

The next allowed razor clam harvest will take place Nov. 13-16 at Mocrocks and Copalis,and Nov. 14-16 at Twin Harbors and Long Beach. The closure affects the following shellfish species:butter, cockles, horse, littleneck, manila, mussels, gooseneck barnacles, Dungeness crab and red rock crab. To allow the smaller clams to grow to a reasonable size, razor clam harvests at Kalaloch are closed.

What causes PSP are natural marine alga. It is supposed to be present more in the summer than in the fall and winter, but PSP levels on Sept. 30 were well passed human health threshold. PSP samples on Oct. 21 were also above.Commercial shellfish operations in southern Washington are tested and have not been affected by PSP.