Countywide : Officials Start 6-Month Mussels Quarantine

Sport harvesting of mussels will be prohibited for six months beginning today along the entire California coastline, said Robert E. Merryman, the director of the environmental health division of the Orange County Health Care Agency.

The annual quarantine is intended to protect the public from eating deadly poisons that may be present in bivalve mollusks such as mussels, clams, oysters and scallops. These shellfish store toxins as a result of feeding on plankton, which is more plentiful during the months of greatest sunlight.

Mussels are the most hazardous, Merryman said, “because they develop high levels of toxin more quickly than other mollusks and are eaten whole, without removal of digestive organs.” Cooking mussels does not destroy the toxins, health officials said, because the poisons are relatively heat resistant.

“Mussels can be used for bait but not for human consumption,” Merryman said. “It’s simply a safety precaution.”

Eating mussels can result in paralytic shellfish poisoning. There have been 521 recorded cases of this type of poisoning in California from 1927 to 1994, health officials said. Thirty-two of the cases resulted in death.

The California quarantine on mussels applies only to sport harvesters. Commercial shellfish harvesters are state-certified and subject to strict testing requirements.

Health officials advise persons who harvest clams, oysters and scallops to remove the dark parts from these mollusks before they are eaten, since poison tends to be concentrated in those areas.