The New England Fishery Management Council will decide next year, after an independent review of studies on the cod population, if new restrictions, including outright closure of the fishery, should be imposed. The basis for that decision, The New York Times reports, will be wildly divergent estimates on how much progress has been made in rebuilding the population of an iconic staple of the New England economy and diet.

From May 2010 to April 2011, commercial fishermen caught about nine million pounds of Gulf of Maine cod, according to the New England Fishery Management Council, earning more than $2 per pound on average.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration set a deadline in 2004 to rebuild the cod species by 2014, and the 2008 survey suggested that goal was within reach. But researchers now say the survey might have sharply overestimated the number of young cod; the new data suggest the spawning population is at only about 20 percent of the rebuilding target. The estimates are based on a mathematical model that uses data from a number of sources, including catch records and research trawlers that fish in the gulf several times a year.

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