SEATTLE - Washington state geoduck harvesters and government officials, including Gov. Jay Inslee, are scrambling to overturn China's decision to ban some shellfish exports from the Pacific Northwest.
The ban has brought the Peuget Sound geoduck industry to a virtual halt. Geoduck is a burrowing clam.
Fish inspectors in China notified the U.S. Embassy on Dec. 3 that China was suspending imports of geoduck and other "double-shell aquatic animals," such as oysters, because they found high levels of paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, in a Nov. 21 shipment of geoducks.
PSP is a biotoxin produced by algae that shellfish eat and, in humans, in high levels it can lead to severe illness and even death.
The ban is a particularly nettlesome problem in Washington because China accounts for about 90 percent of geoduck exports from the state. And fisheries in the state harvest and farm 5.5 million to 7 million pounds of geoduck annually, according to Taylor Shellfish Farms, one of the state's largest geoduck providers. Those companies generally sell the clams for between $7 and $25 a pound.
The ban also affects Alaskan shellfish.
Washington fish companies are struggling to understand why the ban was imposed: Testing by the Washington Department of Health in the area where the geoduck shipments originated found PSP levels well below internationally accepted limits.
"We've gone back and looked at all records — they show results way below any human-health concern," Donn Moyer, a Health Department spokesman, said Saturday.
