I have spent time in a number of fishing villages, some genuinely working and some that stopped fishing decades ago and kept the boats for the view. Telling them apart is not difficult and it changes what you get from being there.
The working ones have a rhythm
The clearest indicator, and it is about time rather than appearance.
A working harbour has a schedule driven by tides, weather and markets. Boats leave and return at particular hours, and there is a period of intense activity when they land — unloading, sorting, ice, buyers, transport.
That activity is frequently early, sometimes before dawn, and it is over by the time most visitors are awake.
Which means the entire working life of the place happens outside the hours that visitors see, and somebody arriving at eleven sees a quiet harbour with boats tied up and concludes that nothing happens.
Getting up for it is the single best thing you can do in such a place, and nobody minds you watching if you stay out of the way.
What has actually changed in these places
Worth understanding because it explains a lot of what you see.
Fishing in most of the world has consolidated. Fewer, larger boats, operating from fewer, larger ports, with quota systems that have concentrated rights.
Small harbours that supported dozens of boats now support a handful, and the crews are older because young people have not entered the industry in the numbers they once did.
Many villages that look like fishing villages now have an economy that is mostly tourism and second homes, with fishing as a small and shrinking remainder.
That is not a decline anybody engineered. It is the result of technology, regulation, economics and demographics, and it is visible in almost every such place if you know what to look for.
What to look for
Whether the boats have been out. Wet decks, ice, gear stowed differently from yesterday, fresh catch.
Whether there is infrastructure that only exists for working boats. An ice plant, a fuel berth, a chandlery, a place selling gear rather than souvenirs, a market or auction.
The age of the boats and whether they are maintained or merely painted.
And whether there are young people working. A harbour where everybody working is over sixty is telling you something about its next twenty years.
The second home question
Worth being honest about because it affects the places visitors love most.
Coastal villages with beautiful buildings and limited housing stock have seen prices rise well beyond local incomes in many countries.
The visible consequence is a village where a large share of the houses are dark for most of the year, where the school has closed for lack of children, and where the shop cannot survive on eight weeks of trade.
This has become a genuinely contentious political issue in a number of places, and several jurisdictions have introduced restrictions or additional taxes in response.
Visitors are not individually to blame for a structural situation. It is worth knowing about, and it does argue for staying in places that are somebody's business rather than in a house that is empty for forty weeks a year.
How to be a good visitor
Practical things that cost nothing.
Keep out of the working areas. A harbour is a workplace with heavy machinery, wet surfaces and people on a schedule.
Ask before photographing people at work, which is a courtesy that is extended remarkably rarely and appreciated when it is.
Buy the fish. Directly if it is sold that way, or at a restaurant that buys locally. This is the most direct support available and it is the thing the place actually produces.
And spend money in the ordinary businesses rather than only the ones aimed at visitors, since those are what keep the village functioning for the people who live there.
What I have found most rewarding
Talking to people, which requires only turning up at the right hour and not being in the way.
Fishermen are generally happy to talk about what they caught, what the season has been like, and what has changed, and much of what I know about the state of the industry came from those conversations rather than from reading.
The perspective is specific and local and frequently at odds with the national conversation about fisheries, which is itself informative.
It also produces the practical information nobody publishes — which restaurant actually buys from the boats, when the weather is going to turn, and where the good beach is that is not in any guide.
The museums are usually good
A small recommendation. Fishing villages frequently have a small local museum, run by volunteers, in a building that used to be something else.
These are consistently among the better museums I visit, because they were assembled by people who lived the thing being described rather than by a professional curator working from a brief.
The objects are ordinary and the labels are frequently handwritten and the person at the desk usually knew the people in the photographs.
An hour there explains what you are looking at outside better than anything else available, and they cost almost nothing.