10 Washington Beach Finds Visitors Aren’t Allowed to Take Home
Washington’s coastline crosses state parks, a national park, tribal land, and protected marine sanctuaries.
Each jurisdiction sets its own rules for what you can pick up and take home.
Here’s what looks like harmless beachcombing but breaks the law in Washington.
Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Washington’s rules on beach collecting and wildlife protection are subject to change.
1. Native American Artifacts
Thousands of years of Native American history are buried along Washington’s beaches.
An arrowhead or a stone tool lying in the sand isn’t a free souvenir.
State law makes it unlawful to remove an archaeological object from a site without a permit from the state’s historic preservation office.
That covers projectile points, tools, and carved stone scattered along tribal shorelines like the Olympic Peninsula’s outer coast.
Disturbing a grave or a burial site carries a heavier charge, a class C felony.
Report it instead.
Washington’s Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation asks beachcombers to note the location, leave the object exactly where it lies, and call it in.
2. State Park Rocks and Shells
State park rangers in Washington can write a citation over something as small as a pebble.
Pocketing a handful counts as a misdemeanor under state law.
Removing any rock, shell, or other natural object from a park beach like Cape Disappointment or Deception Pass requires written permission from park staff.
A ranger who spots a bucket of beach glass or a bag of shells in the trunk can write a citation.
A jar of sand from a state park beach falls under the same rule, since state law defines a natural object broadly.
3. National Park Driftwood
Every log scattered across Kalaloch, Ruby Beach, and Rialto Beach belongs to Olympic National Park.
The park protects Washington’s wildest stretch of coastline, driftwood included.
Federal rules bar removing any natural object from a national park, driftwood included, with fines reaching $5,000.
A driftwood find that’s legal to load into a truck on a public tideland becomes a federal violation the moment it sits inside park boundaries.
Borders matter here.
Washington’s attorney general has said driftwood collecting for personal use is broadly legal outside logs, pilings, and boom sticks, but that opinion stops at the park gate.
4. Sand Dollars and Sea Stars
Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) closes every marine area in the state to taking sand dollars, sea stars, and dozens of other creatures.
State fishing rules group them all as closed “unclassified marine invertebrates.”
That includes moon snails, chitons, and nudibranchs alongside the tide pool classics.
Not even one.
A conviction can bring up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
WDFW added sea stars to the closed list on its own after a wasting disease nearly wiped out entire populations along the coast.
What Washington’s Sand Dollar Rule Covers
Washington’s sand dollar rule covers far more than sand dollars.
State fishing regulations group sand dollars with sea stars, moon snails, chitons, and nudibranchs under one label, “unclassified marine invertebrates.”
Every marine area in Washington is closed to taking any of them, not just a handful of popular tide pool beaches.
A first violation is a misdemeanor, and a court can hand down up to 90 days in jail plus a $1,000 fine.
The safest habit on any Washington beach is to look at tide pool life and leave it exactly where it sits.
5. Pinto Abalone
A shell glowing with streaks of green and pink against a tide pool rock is one of the rarest sights left on the Washington coast.
That color belongs to the pinto abalone, and it hasn’t been legal to take home since 1994.
Washington closed the recreational abalone fishery statewide that year after decades of harvest pushed populations into a steep decline.
The state listed pinto abalone as endangered in 2019, after survey counts in the San Juan Islands fell more than 97 percent between 1992 and 2017.
The limit is zero.
Taking one, even a single abalone pried off a rock for a closer look, is unlawful taking of endangered wildlife under state law, a gross misdemeanor that becomes a felony on a repeat offense.
No season has reopened it since.
6. Shipwreck Relics
The seafloor off Washington’s outer coast holds the wreckage of roughly 200 ships, lost over centuries of maritime shipping.
Storms and heavy seas grounded vessels like the Lamut and the Skagway near beaches like La Push and Kalaloch, and fragments still turn up in the sand.
It’s nobody’s souvenir.
Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary sanctuary regulations bar moving, removing, or injuring any sanctuary historical resource, and shipwreck debris scattered along the intertidal zone counts.
A federal permit is required for any activity otherwise off-limits inside the sanctuary, and pocketing a ship fitting or a chunk of hull iron doesn’t qualify.
The sanctuary runs roughly 135 miles along the coast, bordering Olympic National Park, the reservations of four tribal nations, and Washington’s own Seashore Conservation Area.
7. Snowy Plover Eggs
A speckled egg about the size of a golf ball sits in a shallow scrape in the dry sand, blending almost perfectly into the beach around it.
It belongs to the western snowy plover, one of Washington’s rarest nesting shorebirds.
Fewer than 100 breeding adults remain in the state, nesting mainly at Leadbetter Point in Pacific County and Damon Point near Ocean Shores.
Washington listed the species as state endangered in 1981, and federal law has protected it as threatened since 1993.
Neither law carries an exception.
Picking up or disturbing a nest or an egg violates both laws, and WDFW closes stretches of beach around active nests every spring and summer to keep visitors clear.
Those closures run roughly mid-April through mid-September, exactly when many beach trips happen.
8. Wild Bird Feathers
A stray feather is one of the most common things a visitor pockets on a Washington beach.
Federal law says not to.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act bans possessing any feather from a native bird, seagulls included, whether it was plucked or simply found lying in the sand.
Fines can run up to $15,000 per feather.
Bald eagle feathers carry an extra layer of protection under a second federal law, with penalties that add up to a year in prison.
Finding it doesn’t help.
Psst! How much do you know about Washington’s coastline and tide pools? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Washington Coast & Tide Pool Trivia
Answer these questions on Washington’s coastline and tide pools. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Which point on the Washington coast is the northwesternmost spot in the entire contiguous United States?
9. Marine Mammal Bones
Washington's outer coast washes up seal, sea lion, and occasionally whale bones.
None of them are legal souvenirs.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act bans possessing any part of a marine mammal, including a bone from an animal that died naturally years earlier.
Age doesn't matter.
That covers a bleached vertebra half buried in the sand as much as a fresh carcass.
Report it instead of pocketing it.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries office asks beachcombers to call in a find so researchers can log it.
10. Marine Sanctuary Souvenirs
A handful of Washington beaches ban collecting anything at all, dead or alive.
Edmonds' Brackett's Landing is the best known example.
Other no-take zones exist.
The city and WDFW jointly protect Brackett's Landing Shoreline Sanctuary as a no-take zone, so shells, rocks, driftwood, and marine life all stay exactly where they land.
The rule covers roughly 25,000 divers who visit every year, plus every beachcomber walking the shoreline above them.
Washington runs ten similar underwater parks along Puget Sound, each with its own no-take rule.
