Coastal cooking around the world shares a set of techniques that have nothing to do with taste in origin. They exist because fish spoils quickly and markets were far away.
The problem was time, not distance
Fish deteriorates faster than almost any other food, and before refrigeration a catch had a working life measured in hours rather than days.
A village could eat what it landed, but selling inland required the product to survive a journey by cart or boat that might take a week.
Preservation converted a perishable catch into a tradeable commodity, and that conversion is what allowed fishing to become an industry rather than subsistence.
Salt removes the water that spoilage needs
Salting draws moisture out of the flesh and creates conditions in which the organisms responsible for decay cannot function.
Heavy salting produces something that keeps for months and must be soaked before use, while lighter curing produces a shorter-lived product with a fresher texture.
Which method a coast adopted depended largely on whether salt was cheap locally, which is why regions with salt pans developed different traditions from those importing it.
Drying and smoking solve the same problem differently
Cold dry air will preserve fish without salt at all, which is why wind-drying developed in northern coasts where the climate does the work.
Smoking adds compounds that inhibit spoilage while also drying the surface, and it was often combined with a light cure rather than used alone.
Warm humid coasts could not rely on either, and there fermentation and heavy salting produced the pastes and sauces that anchor those cuisines.
Preserved fish became the flavour base
Once a coast had a preserved product, cooking organised itself around it, and the strong savoury character of cured fish became the backbone of local seasoning.
Sauces, pastes and dried flakes made from fish appear as fundamental ingredients across many coastal cuisines, used in small quantities to season dishes containing no fish at all.
That is why the techniques survived refrigeration. The product was no longer needed for storage but had become indispensable for taste.
What this means for eating on a coast
The preserved dishes of a fishing region are usually its oldest and most distinctive, and they are frequently cheaper than the fresh fish sold alongside them.
They also travel, which makes them the most practical thing to take home from a coastal trip and the closest a visitor gets to the working food of the place.
Trying the cured version alongside the fresh one is the fastest way to understand a coastal cuisine, because the difference between them is the history of the port.