Shellfish / Mussel
Shellfish: Mussel
Mytilus spp.
Opens Nov 182d out
Open
Nov 1 – Apr 30
Best
Nov–Feb
spawning
Jun–Aug
Meat and gonad plump with reserves in cold water, fullest late fall through winter; summer warming triggers spawning that leaves them thin, the same warm window as the PSP quarantine.
signal · PSP/domoic biotoxin (quarantine driver), water temp, condition index. (modeled)
Plate No. 041 · Finley & Bohlman
Abundant, low impact
Fast-growing and plentiful on the rock: take the big ones and leave the small anchor mussels that hold the bed.
The read
Blue-black teardrop shells on rocks and pilings. Closed by quarantine in warm months.
The event: Cold-season harvest, typically best November through April.
Field notes
Blue-black clusters on wave-washed rock, jetties, and pilings, exposed on the low tide. Twist and pull from the base of a clump; take the big ones and leave the small anchor mussels that hold the bed.
Cold-months mussels fill the shell with fat orange-cream meat; summer mussels are thin and spawning. The keeper is shut, or snaps shut when tapped; any that stay open are dead and get discarded. The beard pulls free at cooking.
Blue-black teardrop shells in dense clumps: the big California mussel (Mytilus californianus) on the open coast, the smaller bay mussel on quieter structure. Both eat well.
Shellfish license (12+). 72 mussels/day; confirm the current ODFW limit.
Take from rock, jetty, and pilings where open. The cold-months window here is when mussels are typically open to harvest and fattest; confirm the beach is open before you gather.
Debeard, scrub, and steam open in wine or broth: minutes only, and discard any that don't open. Overcooking turns them to rubber.
What we watch: live feeds
What informs Bay / California Mussel in particular. The shared feeds it reads (tides, weather, water temp) are the live feeds above.
ODA shellfish closures: ArcGIS FeatureServer · Machine-readable open/closed status for clams & mussels by coast zone, as polygons with a coded Status field.
Event (~2×/mo) · JSON, no key. ESRI IDs rotate; anchor on dashboard item metadata, not raw URL.