A rideshare trip from Seattle ended with four people cited for illegally harvesting 500 oysters without licenses, according to Washington wildlife police.
POTLATCH, Wash — A group from the Seattle area hired a rideshare driver to take them to the Hood Canal to illegally harvest hundreds of oysters last month, police said.
One weekend in April, a Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife police sergeant spotted people unloading buckets of what he believed to be shellfish into a minivan near a public beach along U.S. 101.
The minivan drove to a parking lot at Potlatch State Park, and the officer saw a large number of oysters in the car.
The car’s driver said he was a rideshare driver, and the oysters didn’t belong to him. He told the officer four people, some of whom were from the Seattle area, hired him to take them to Mason County.
About 500 oysters were recovered from the minivan, which police said were illegally harvested.
When the four people who harvested the oysters returned from the beach, they were cited for not having shellfish licenses, possession of unshucked oysters, possession of overlimit oysters and possession of undersized oysters.
The daily limit for oysters is 18 per person, and the oysters must be at least 2 ½ inches in diameter, according to state shellfish regulations.
Oysters must also be shucked on the beach, and the shells must be left in the same tideland and tide height they were collected. Young oysters grow on the spent shells, which WDFW police said helps boost harvesting opportunities in the future.
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