Why doesn’t the Orthodox Union just publish a kosher fish list?
At this time, there is no reliable consumer fish list, and it would be very difficult to create one. The reason is that “common names” are a highly inaccurate way of describing a fish. For example, there are several fish known as “red snapper”.13 Who can say for certain that every fish called “red snapper” is in fact kosher, when “red snapper” could be referring to so many different fish? Another instance that we have found common names to be misleading is in the case of “Escolar”. Escolar could refer to Ruvettus pretiosus (kosher) or Gempylus serpens (non-kosher). Yet another is “Ling” which could refer to 6 different species of fish14 most of which are in fact kosher. However when the OU examined a sample of one of these “Ling” fish whose Latin name is Lota Lota (also called Burbot, Freshwater Cod, Eelpout, Lawyer and other names) we found it to be not kosher. Latin names are more accurate. We could theoretically create a list of kosher fish by Latin name. The problem is that fish se
