Abstract: To survey salted-dried fishes characteristic flavor substances, the volatile compounds in four traditional salted-dried fishes, namely, karafuto-shishamo(Spirinchus lanceolatus), tigertooth croa- ker(Otolithes rube), little yellow croaker (Pseudosciaena polyactis)and hairtail(Trichiurus haumela)were extracted by solid phase microextraction(SPME) and further analyzed and identified by method of gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy(GC-MS). The results showed that the compositions and kinds of volatile compounds were different in the four salted-dried fishes. There were 105, 89, 88 and 72 different kinds of volatile compounds with more than 80% matching degree isolated and identified. The contents of major volatile compounds were aldehydes, alcohols, hydrocarbons, which accounted for 49.99%, 53.09%, 60.54%, and 86.18% of the total volatile compounds of the four salted-dried fishes respectively. The major odors of salted-dried fishes were confirmed as fishy, grassy-fatty which were in good agreement with previous investigations. 3-methyl butanal, hexanal, (z)-4-heptenal,?heptanal, benzaldehyde, octanal, nonanal, 1-penten-3-ol, 3-methyl butanol, 1-octen-3-ol, heptanol and trimethylamine, were found to be involved in the formation of characteristic flavour.