Newport business works to reduce Oregon’s fish waste

NEWPORT— Each year, Local Ocean Seafoods buys 100,000 pounds of fresh whole fish from the fishing vessels across its street along Yaquina Bay.

The Newport restaurant opened in 2002 in the town’s historic bayfront. It has become a local staple known for serving locally-caught seafood to tourists visiting Oregon’s Central Coast.

But in 2025, the restaurant began a new mission focused on uplifting the “blue economy” — or using sustainable ocean resources to grow the local economy.

On average, about half of the weight of the fish the restaurant buys is cut into fillets, leaving nearly 50,000 pounds of fish byproduct to go to waste. In May, the restaurant launched its 100% Fish Program to reduce the amount of fish waste the restaurant was sending to the landfill and turning its fish scraps