From Washington To You

From Washington to you

Olympia Oyster

Discovery Bay · Jefferson County · 19 priority sites named 2012

Washington’s only native oyster was cut to a remnant of its old beds. WDFW and partners are putting shell, and oysters, back.

WDFW says the Olympia oyster, Ostrea lurida, is Washington’s only native oyster. Adults are usually 5 to 7 centimeters long. From about 1850 through the early 1900s, heavy harvest and conversion of natural beds into farms nearly wiped the species out here. By 2012, WDFW says as little as 5 percent of historical oyster-bed habitat remained.

In 2012 WDFW named 19 priority restoration sites in Puget Sound. The 1998 rebuilding plan was not funded as a WDFW project, so much of the field work has been done with the Puget Sound Restoration Fund and other partners. WDFW says those partners reached a 10-year goal of restoring 100 acres of Olympia oyster habitat by 2020. The oysters brood larvae inside the shell for 10 to 12 days, a trait WDFW links to some resilience to ocean acidification.

WDFW photographs recovering beds at Discovery Bay. This pin is that bay. The sources below are Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife pages.

  • Wildlife & Ecology
  • Science / Strange Washington

Sources (2)

Last reviewed: September 21, 2026

Keep wandering

  • nearby

    Dungeness Spit

    One of the world's longest sand spits shelters a bay President Wilson set aside in 1915 as a refuge, preserve, and breeding ground for native birds.

  • same arc

    Hood Canal Hypoxia

    A slow-flushing fjord on the west side of Puget Sound where NOAA says oxygen is characteristically lowest in Lower Hood Canal, and where hypoxia has killed fish.

  • nearby

    Protection Island

    A 364-acre refuge closed to the public holds puffins, auklets, and harbor seals, with a 200-yard watercraft buffer around the shore.