Piper, you were the most right..I called Pat at WDFW today and found out that they changed the seasons to cooincide with each other so that enforcement could check the beaches in roughly the same time frame. Some of the closures and re-opening had to do with resource mamangement. One example is Eagle Crk, which aprently had a big reduction in the legal size of the oyster population. In other areas, such as the Dosewalips, clam populations are rebounding well. So, if I understand what he was saying correctly, it was mostly about resource and people management.