The whole fish can be either cleaned of their entrails or left intact, then buried under ground in a pit lined with grass and left for about a week depending on the temperature. If the fish are caught in the late fall, they are stored in a wooden or cardboard box until they are aged, and then frozen. Tepcuaraq kumlaneq are eaten frozen with seal oil. "Tepngayaaq" is fermented a little frozen fish. "Tepa" (sg "Tepet" pl; lit. «odor, smell, aroma, scent») is aged or fermented salmon fish head. Known as "aged fish head" or "fermented fish head", commonly called as "stinkheads, stink heads, stinky heads". Tepas were considered a traditional special Yup'ik delicacy, but really the dish is something favored mostly by older Alaska Natives. Traditionally, most people continued to make tepa in the summer. Heads ("pakegvissaaq" is head of fish including pectoral fins) of chinook (king), sokeye (red), chum (dog), and occasionally, coho (silver) salmon were prepared by burying them in the ground and allowed them to ferment before eating. The traditional way to prepare tepa was to bury the heads in the ground along with most of the fish guts in a wooden barrel covered with burlap material. Earthen pits lined with grass were used for this process. Salmon milt and eggs were added to the heads which were then covered with another layer of grass before being covered over with earth. The fermenting process took from one to two weeks depending on temperature of the ground. One salmon production unit prepared four pits of tepa. The pits measured approximately 18 inches deep and 2 feet square and contained approximately 75 salmon heads each. The heads of 1,000 chinook, 726 sockeye, 1,246 chum, and 41 coho salmon were prepared as tepa by Kwethluk households during 1986. One resident told the researchers, "to the Native it's like candy or bubblegum, sweet and sour, in between the two." However, with the introduction of plastic buckets, the danger of botulism has surfaced and informants stressed the importance of avoiding these types of modern containers since the "oldfashioned" methods allowed oxygen to circulate and prevented the growth of bacteria which causes botulism. Heads stored underground in plastic bags are more likely to develop botulism than fish stored in grasses.