PROVIDENCE — Using a small fridge in the corner of his empty shop as a table, Stuart “Stu” Meltzer was taking a break recently, using chopsticks to pick up slices of raw fluke and dunking them in soy sauce before snacking on them. His popular Fearless Fish Market on Hope Street was closed for the day when I visited him, and he handed me a 10-page packet of notes, titled “A fishmonger’s take on how we’re talking about fish all wrong.”

Three and a half hours of reading and conversation later, I had learned a lot. And I realized how lost I’ve felt when it comes to the basics of buying and eating fish.

Stu Meltzer is serious about fish. The bearded fishmonger talks about it in a way a proud father talks about his children. He opens the door of an outdoor cooler that is located directly in back of Fearless Fish Market, and begins to explain how totes of fish are stacked with ice and labeled by species and the name of the fisherman who caught them. “Everything is labeled by harvest date and the size,” he says. “When we ship it out, we know which fish were harvested on which day.”

He points to a nearly pure white fluke resting on ice and explains how this radiant fish was bled out as part of the Japanese ikejime method of harvesting fish.