A very short entry explaining what green herring is, together with a visual explanation of why the silver darlings may have acquired that name
GREEN HERRING
Green Herring is a term for the fresh or uncured fish. The green refers to richer colour of the herring’s skin when caught (as seen in the illustration from Friedrich Heincke*’s Naturgeschichte des Herings).
It does not refer not to the possibility that, traditionally, the herring might have gone off.