water flight eating almost everything either raw, live, or fermented also makes it so that if you're going to a sub-surface restaurant or bar or something, them keeping their food stock in the form of an owner-run kelp farm out back or a big tank of live fish is basically a given. supplementing these with myriad jars of pickled and fermented products, carefully dispensed with sealed containers to avoid both polluting and losing product into the water. by necessity, everything else is farm-to-table in a very direct and immediate manner, and water flight food culture often considers freshness key and other culture's seeming comparative obsession with cooking largely unnecessary, and raw fresh foods are usually served unseasoned ostensibly to allow you to taste and appreciate the freshness (but in reality because seasoning meat or adding dipping sauce underwater is functionally impossible). fermented and pickled foods, by contrast, can sometimes be quite heavily seasoned, and often taste strongly of vinegar and salt. surface dweller clan food cultures however are much more varied, and there you will find much more cooking, seasoned foods, and influence from other cuisines. since surface-dweller cuisine is usually the only kind that outsiders are familiar with, it tends to paint an inaccurate picture in the average dragon's mind of water flight as a paradise of deliciously tropical-seasoned grilled fish, fruits, and roast kelp creations, leaving them woefully unprepared for the culture shock of what everyone past the shoreline actually eats. the closest you're likely to find to insects to eat past the water line is also basically just crabs.
hypercarnivorous breeds might be able to make do to a degree with the meat of marine mammals, but there is nothing adequate for long-term survival and nothing edible for obligate insectivores at all. for this reason, there are almost no obligate carnivorous or insectivorous breeds living below the surface, and none at all past the point where surface shipping trade dares regularly tread. the breakdown and ramshackle emergency reconstruction of thousandfold-sea society following the great storm has led many a reef-dwelling insectivore to death by starvation when the supply lines failed to arrive.
