One is serving customers directly from his moored fishing boat, the other from the docks at the Old Harbour in the port city of Wismar. Between them are stacks of red and green crates, a heap of plastic bags into which they slip their freshly caught, shiny silver fish, and a blackboard scrawled with one word: herring.
Today is the first day of Wismar’s annual two-week herring festival, and local fisherman Martin Saager is busy arranging wooden tables and benches next to a small white tent from which he and his colleagues will shortly be selling fried herring. Martin started his own business in 2003, after fishing for his father’s company for almost a decade. Five years ago, he broadened his operations, opening a snack bar at the harbour, selling fish and chips and pickled herring, and buying fish from elsewhere to supplement his own catch. But today, his offering is simple: fried herring with sliced white bread. And bottles of beer. “Fish have got to swim,” he grins.
Herring has been a staple food on Germany’s Baltic coast for centuries and it remains a vital resource for small-scale fisheries across the
