Field trip to Bremerhaven

This has been one of the greatest winter in Bremen, for a long time Bremen has not had the opportunity to experience some serious snow fall or snow for that matter. Most of the older folks recount  how the temperature’s would even go as low as minus 15 and there would be much snow that would require some shovelling each day, but alas! As years progressed on not much snow fell in-fact I was told to travel to south Germany if I really wanted to  experience snow until the sky´s opened up and let snow fall.  Now they tell me how lucky I am that this winter it has snowed in-fact everyone is happy that it is snowing, what makes me happy is to see nearly all the people woken up and shovelling snow more less at the same time as is there is a rule to that!

A view from outside my room

However, I don’t want to talk about snow, this week  we have been learning about fish and how to catch fish. And as usual there isn´t much fish to see in Bremen so we embarked on a journey to Bremerhaven  to get some first hand experince on  how to process fish and get an insight on some of the fish products. Our vist took us to a fish company called Deutschsee, one of the biggest fish franchise in Germany. Unfortunately they did not allow us to take our cameras with us due to health and food safety requiremnts, infact we had to dress in fully covered attires including  shoe covers so as to minimise any risk of food contamination, you would think we were under quarantine.  In addition, we had to disninfect our hands and shoe covers before finally getting entry in to the processsing chamber.  It is amazing what fish can be transformed to with the power of machine and creativity, apart from the normal smoked fish and raw fish the company has a variety of over 90 fish products that end up in our stomach, I must say that the entire process was a torture as we had to battle with enzymes due to the aroma from the smoked fish and the sight of some of the end products. It took us amlost 4 hours to complet our visit around the company, I was disappointed they did not take us through the tasting chamber.

Our next vist was at the ship museum, where we got a tour on one of the last  fish trawler´s. The captain of the ship has been fishing since the early 1940´s. He has spent half of his life in search of fish, I have had my experience with the sea and one thing that am convinced of is that I don´t want to spend more than six months in the water, don´t get me wrong I love the see the fish and everything about water but am not ready to live on it. Man´s quest for fish comes a long way, when man only used  his hand and simple techniques to catch fish, but its amazing to see that as early as the 40´s there were already technology to locate fish, and the innovations that have been made since then give the fish no chance to escape.  Man indeed has become the top predator in the food chain and with the concern for global warming the number of fish will definately continue to plunder.  The tour around the trawler gave us a glimse of how hard life was in the sea in the past and to date with all the advancements, the sea is still one of the deadliest working enviroment claiming lives mainly due to the sea enviroment and partly due to accidental deaths.

A preview of some of the ships on display

Miniature trawler on display

Our last tour took us to a net assembling factory, a family business that has been in place for over 40 years. The senior partner was a fisherman and so he has first hand experience on what the fishermen needs.  Despite having reached the retirement age, he is still going strong and enjoys what he is doing.  It made me ask myself if I really enjoy my current profession, am convinced I do! I don´t want to get so much in to nets and fishing gears, but the moral of the visit was that, it is better to work on what you enjoy, no matter how long it takes you to get there. This is great beacuse you will have the zeal to wake up each morning with a new determination, you will be glad to discover new things and will be able to fully utilize your potential to ensure that you attain success!