Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 06/27/2008 - 15:37
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Kuril Islands Biocomplexity 08

hi dr. entire it is me tyler today i looked at the photo gallery and saw the pictere of the dried up fish. i was wondering does soul have the same technology as we do Sealed? if not how do thay dry the fish? p.s. how did it taste 

Mon, 06/30/2008 - 16:26

KBP Team

Seoul is actually a major hub of technological research and development-especially in the electronics industry. Cell phones, plasma TVs, MP3 players-you name it. Several large electronics manufacturers have business and production facilities in and around Seoul. So while I'm not sure of exactly how they dry their tiny fish, I'm fairly certain that it is a large-scale, industrial process. This fish in the market are all neatly packaged, by size, in large boxes (see photo).
 Boxes of dried fish of various sizes at the Namdaemun Market in Seoul
For all I know, the fish may actually be raised on aquaculture farms.
And to answer your question about how it tasted? Well, for lack of a better descriptor, it tasted kinda....fishy! ;) The flavor wasn't really all that different than, say, a canned sardine might taste. Or anchovies, if you could ever find any that hadn't been marinated in very salty brine first. And, in fact, we eat dried fish in Russia, as well (see photo)

Dr. Etnier works on a piece of dried fish jerky at the Bazaar in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in 2006 (Photo by Misty Nikula).
But in Russia we've mostly seen them air dry the fish just hanging on lines, or across railings, or from a nail tacked into the wall......
Dr. E