The Witness

The Baltic sea research journey continues. This time through an encounter that quietly expanded the scope of the project.

In Riga, I met Valdis Brauns, a master of black-and-white photography whose work has documented Latvian fishermen over decades. His photographs focus on coastal fishing communities during the second half of the 20th century, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s—a period when fishing was still a central economic and social structure along the Latvian coast.

When you look at his work, the photographs hold attention because nothing is exaggerated. They rely on careful composition and the character itself.  When I asked him whether he interacted with the fishing communities he photographed, he said he tried not to disturb them. His aim was to be present without interfering. To observe without inserting himself.

That deliberate quietness matters. It is what allows the photographs to open a world we rarely have access to. Through his lens, we are not shown spectacle or drama. We are shown daily rhythms, work routines, and what it meant to live a life oriented around the sea.

Looking through his book, something else becomes clear. Many of the fishermen and communities he photographed no longer exist in the same form—or at all. The images function not only as documentation, but as evidence. Brauns became a witness to ways of life that have since dissolved. His work captures communities across generations whose existence was inseparable from the sea itself.

Research on coastal and small-scale fishing communities consistently shows that fishing is not merely an occupation. It structures social relations, local knowledge systems, seasonal rhythms, identity, and intergenerational continuity. When fish stocks decline or access to fishing is lost, the effects extend beyond income loss. Communities fragment. Younger generations leave. Cultural knowledge tied to place and practice erodes. Social cohesion weakens.

In other words, if there is no fish, there is no fishing. And without fishing, there is often no community in the sense that once existed.

One might argue that this is simply part of societal change. Technologies evolve. Economies change. And that is true. Anthropologists do not deny change. What they point to, however, is what happens when a single foundational element is removed too quickly or without viable alternatives. Small-scale fishing communities are not interchangeable with other economic units. They are place-based systems that modern replacements rarely reproduce. Studies of former fishing regions show increased out-migration, loss of local institutions, declining wellbeing, and long-term regional vulnerability when fishing communities disappear without structural support.

These communities stabilise coastal regions. This is well documented across Northern Europe. Once a critical threshold is crossed, services close, infrastructure degrades, and recovery becomes structurally unlikely. This is not a cultural loss argument — it is a regional resilience problem.

Women in Latvian fishing communities. Their strength sustained coastal life and deserves focused research in its own right.

They also produce and transmit ecological knowledge that institutions cannot easily replace. Small-scale fishers accumulate generational, practice-based knowledge about fish behaviour, seasonal variation, and local marine conditions. When these communities dissolve, this knowledge does not transfer cleanly into scientific databases or management systems. Studies in environmental governance show that the loss of local ecological knowledge reduces the quality of fisheries management and weakens early-warning capacity for ecological change. In short—systems become more blind, not more efficient.

This is where the Baltic sea project situates itself.

The aim is not nostalgia. It is not to argue that the past should be preserved unchanged. It is to make visible the deep interdependencies between ecological change and social life. Changes in the Baltic sea are not abstract environmental issues. They alter livelihoods, and the continuity of communities along its coasts.

This project seeks to trace those connections—carefully, rigorously, —so that decisions about the Baltic sea are understood not only in ecological terms, but in human ones as well.