When did anyone last check the tideline at Three Tree Point for European green crab? The state's records give a surprising answer. On the official map, the stretch of central Puget Sound near the Point has no detections, and some nearby areas haven't been trapped recently either.

That matters because Washington is still in a green crab emergency. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's FY2026 annual report to the Legislature, published September 10, 2026, says the emergency "continues to persist" and recommends keeping all emergency measures in place. The state budget for 2025–27 continues roughly $12.2 million for green crab management, and the Department of Natural Resources received another $2.5 million for work on state-owned aquatic lands. Most of that money and effort goes where crabs have already turned up. A shoreline like the Point's gets watched another way, by people walking the beach who know what an empty crab shell can tell them.

Where the crabs are, and how close they've come

WDFW's European green crab species page traces the spread. The crabs reached the Washington coast in 1998 at Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. They showed up in the Salish Sea at Sooke Basin, British Columbia, in 2012 and in the San Juan Islands in 2016. Hood Canal followed in 2022, then the area near Port Gamble in spring 2025, then tribal tidelands in Whidbey Basin in fall 2025.

The Port Gamble find is the closest point on that timeline to Burien. WDFW announced on May 23, 2025 that two crabs had been caught near Port Gamble and another at Races Cove, west of Hansville. By the end of June 2025, the Foulweather-Salsbury area near Port Gamble had produced 28 crabs: three in May and 25 in June. The agency said the source of those crabs was unknown.

The species page also states plainly where the line currently sits. European green crabs "have not been confirmed in the Salish Sea south of central Hood Canal and the southern tip of Whidbey Island in Admiralty Inlet," and early detection monitoring continues across central and south Puget Sound. WDFW's October 2026 field season update adds that no new management-area-level detections had occurred so far in 2026.

So Three Tree Point is south of the confirmed range. The more useful question is how actively the water near it is being checked.

What the trapping record shows for central Puget Sound

The FY2026 report covers July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026, and goes through central Puget Sound one coordination area at a time. Every area came back with zero green crabs, but trapping effort varied widely from place to place:

Two rows stand out to anyone who walks the beach at Seahurst or the Point. Elliott Bay, to the north, has had no green crab management activity. In the area WDFW calls SeaTac Passage, the report says trapping "has not occurred" since FY2025, and no green crabs have been detected there. Quartermaster Harbor, off Vashon, got about 42% less trapping than the year before.

None of this suggests carelessness. Trapping is expensive, and the money follows confirmed detections. But it means a "no crabs" result for this part of the Sound depends more and more on surveys that don't use traps.

The survey that doesn't need a trap

That survey is Molt Search, a community science project run by Washington Sea Grant's Crab Team and Washington State University Extension. Crabs shed their shells as they grow, and the empty molts wash up in the wrackline, the band of seaweed and debris the tide leaves behind. A molt keeps the shell features that identify the species, so a beach walker can find evidence of a green crab without ever seeing a live one.

The protocol is short and standardized:

1. Set the clock to 20 person-minutes. One person searches for 20 minutes, two people for 10 minutes each, or a team of four for five minutes.
2. Walk the wrackline and collect every crustacean molt you find. Don't stop to identify anything while the timer is running. Sort and identify after it ends.
3. Photograph the whole collection from overhead, with something for scale.
4. Submit the survey through MyCoast, even if you found nothing. "No Molts Found" is a valid entry.

Step four is what ties this back to the trapping table. In an area with no recent traps, a dated, photographed report of an empty wrackline is a real data point that the state doesn't otherwise have. Washington Sea Grant staff monitor MyCoast submissions. If a green crab is confirmed in a new body of water, the finding goes to WDFW and its partners, who may follow up with trapping. On a shoreline with no recent trapping, a resident's report may be what starts the next round of traps.

Five teeth, three teeth, ten teeth

Color won't help you. WDFW notes that green crabs range from reddish to a dark mottled green, and the Crab Team's guide says color is unreliable. Count the marginal teeth along the edge of the shell instead, on each side, behind the eyes:

• European green crab: five teeth per side, three rounded lobes between the eyes, and a shell wider than it is long that seldom exceeds four inches across.
• Native hairy shore crab: three forward-pointing teeth. This is the crab most often mistaken for a green crab in Washington.
• Dungeness and red rock crabs: ten teeth.

A true molt is usually light and opens along a hinge, which helps separate it from a dead crab. If you find what looks like a live green crab, WDFW asks you to photograph it and report it quickly using the form on its identification and reporting page. Don't kill it. Native crabs are often misidentified, and the agency would rather protect them than lose them to a mistaken ID. It is also illegal to possess a live European green crab in Washington.

The stakes on a gravel beach are specific. WDFW says a single green crab can eat 40 half-inch clams a day, dig six inches down to reach them, and damage eelgrass beds that matter to salmon and forage fish.

Learning it at Seahurst on November 7

The Environmental Science Center is running a Green Crab Molt Search Training on Saturday, November 7, 2026, from 10 a.m. to noon at the ESC Building in Seahurst Park, 1600 SW Seahurst Park Rd. The session covers the threat, native and invasive crab identification, the Molt Search protocol, and MyCoast reporting. Registration is required, and the training is geared toward ages 13 and up. It starts indoors and then moves to the beach in the high-tide zone, where the footing is uneven, mostly rock and sand. ESC also has an older event page for the same training dated June 6. The current events listing shows November 7.

November is past the busiest molt season. The Crab Team says searches can happen any time of day, year-round, but molts are more plentiful in the warmer months from May through October. That makes the fall training a good way to learn how to count teeth and file a report over the winter, when finds are sparse and "No Molts Found" will be the most common entry. By next May, when the wrackline fills up again, you'll already know the routine.

As for where to search, the Crab Team asks volunteers to use Washington Salish Sea shorelines with safe, legal access. Seahurst Park is the obvious one. On the Point itself, the south beach at Maplewild Ave SW and SW 172nd Street is where the community gathers each New Year's Day for the Polar Bear Plunge, and the organizers there note in a B-Town Blog report that parking is limited. If you'd like a warm-up with the same group first, ESC's Seahurst Bird & Plant Walk on October 24 is full, but it has a waitlist.

Every report filed from this stretch of beach adds a dated record to a part of the map that hasn't been trapped since FY2025.

At Michelle Codd Homes, we think knowing a waterfront neighborhood means knowing its tideline, from who looks after it to which beaches people can legally walk. If you own on or near Three Tree Point and want to talk about your shoreline, your access, or what your home is worth, reach out and we'll start with a free home value estimate.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.