[Washington]
What's legal, where
Set your state and whether you're cutting for yourself or to sell — the map below updates to match. Harvest law changes hard at every state line, and the beaches most people assume are open are usually the closed ones. Short version of the law lives in Rules.
[Where the map says yes]
The state parks are closed. The county beaches aren't.
Almost everyone who asks me where to forage has the same wrong map in their head: big park, big parking lot, obviously public. That's usually the one place you can't cut.
Two honest caveats. First, ownership below the high-tide line is messy — where I couldn't verify it, the pin says unverified instead of guessing. Second, legal and safe are different questions: a beach can be perfectly legal to cut and still sit beside an outflow I wouldn't eat from. Those are marked too.
Check the state's water-safety map the morning you go, cut above the holdfast, and take only what you'll actually cook.
- Open year-round
- Seasonal window only
- Look, don't cut
- Not yet verified
Hatched pins and hatched areas mean no take — reserves, marine protected areas, state parks, and private tideland. The hatch marks the closure, not its exact boundary; check the agency map before you cut anywhere near an edge.
Tap a pin on the map — the full rule, timing and directions for that one beach show up right here. Or open the list below to pick from all 29.
Browse all 29 beaches→
[Right tool for the day]
This page answers one question: what am I allowed to take, and where. If what you actually need is when — the window your beach is exposed, tidepool and snorkel spots, events along the coast — that all lives in TideEx, my field tool for reading the water. Know the rule here; time the day there.