State health officials lift quarantine for sport-harvested mussels

The California Department of Public Health’s annual quarantine on mussels gathered by sport harvesters from the state’s coastal waters ended Friday.

Agency officials say the quarantine was lifted at midnight for all coast counties except Ventura County.

Although paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins remain at low or undetectable levels along the entire coast – another toxin, domoic acid, remains at high levels in some samples from Ventura County.

The annual quarantine, which typically runs May 1 through October 31, is intended to protect the public from paralytic shellfish poisoning and amnesic shellfish poisoning. There have been no reports of shellfish-related poisoning in California during the quarantine period.

PSP is a form of nervous system poisoning. Concentrated levels of the toxins can develop in mussels and other bivalve shellfish when they feed on certain naturally occurring marine plankton. ASP, also known as domoic acid poisoning (DAP), has been linked to another type of marine plankton consumed by filter-feeding animals, like bivalve shellfish. Domoic acid has been linked to numerous poisonings of marine mammals along the Pacific Coast. For more information about these toxins, click here.

Updated information about shellfish poisoning is available by calling the Shellfish Information Line at (800) 553-4133. More information can be found online here.