preserving food in wet environment without clay?
I have been watching a show from History channel called "Alone". I've watched seasons 1,2,3 and 4. It is basically a reality about alone individuals in Vancouver Island or Patagonia, which seem to be quite damp environments.
Some of the people in the show seem to be getting some days more fish than they can eat. Then i was wondering: in such a humid environment, how could you preserve food? One guy was drying fish file and keeping them just in an open bucket.
Drying / smoking could be one option, but the dried/smoked fish would have to be kept in some kind of watertight container, so it wouldnt rehidrate with moisture in the air. And maybe setting up the infrastructure and big ammounts of firewood needed for high temperature pottery (clay becomes watertight from about 800 degrees Celsius, as i have read), would be a serious energy-consuming endeavour.
I thought, maybe making pine pitch lined baskets could do the trick. It seems some of the participants in the show had plenty of free time that could have been used for making baskets and collecting pitch. BTW, how tight should a weave be for holding the pitch and not needing a lot of it?
I guess coiled or twined grass would be first choices?
Maybe packing the dried fish with something that would absorve moisture but not release it? Kind of like keeping some rice in the salt shaker.
I have been thinking about this for many days and i can not come up with anything else. I would be really happy if anyone could enlighten me with any other posibility.
Thanks for reading my post, I'm very sorry for my awful English.
In case somebody was wondering, i do not intend to participate in any show