Bred in an environment of widespread disrespect for federal authority and policies, illegal groundfishing in New England is rampant, on the rise and endangers the recovery of the fishery, a newly published scientific study contends.

The academic authors, Dennis M. King and Jon G. Sutinen, characterize a sizeable portion of the fishermen as being on a cynical pillaging of the wild resources, and are recommending more and stronger enforcement including "targeting of frequent violators" and "criminal penalties."

Published Wednesday in the journal Marine Policy, the study, according to King, is intended to be the first chapter in a planned series of four regional reports on fishery law enforcement compliance.

The project was organized at the Environmental Law Institute and financed by the Lenfest Foundation, which was established at the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2000.

As much because of the timing of the study's publication as its association with Pew — a multi-billion philanthropy that has pursued what is perceived in the fishing community as a hostile, anti-fishing, environmental agenda — the report is certain to inflame hostilities just as Jane Lubchenco, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with authority over oceans and fisheries, tries to douse them.

On the same day the report was published, Lubchenco — a marine ecologist, a leader in the Pew environmental movement,and a former Pew "fellow" — said she has asked the Inspector General of the Department of Commerce to conduct a "formal review" of "our enforcement operations."

Declaring at her confirmation hearing in January that she considered the relationship between federal regulators and the New England fishing industry to be "seriously dysfunctional," Lubchenco announced the decision to bring in the Inspector General in a letter to U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

On behalf of U.S. Sen. John Kerry and the three fishing coast Massachusetts congressmen — Barney Frank, Bill Delahunt and John Tierney — on May 1, Kennedy appealed in writing to Lubchenco for her to "investigate allegations of excessive penalties and retaliatory actions" by federal fisheries' law enforcement officers based in Gloucester.

Lubchenco did not respond to a request for comment yesterday on the Marine Policy report, titled "Rational Noncompliance and the Liquidation of Northeast Groundfish Resources."

The authors based their report on a 2007 survey of fishermen, managers, scientists and enforcement officials and their data, and concluded that the "deterrence effect of the existing enforcement system" in the New England groundfish fishery is "weak" because "economic gains from violating fishing regulations are nearly five times the economic value or expected penalties."

Connected to King and Sutenin's conclusion that there is more to be gained than lost by cheating in the New England groundfishery is their theory that the cheaters justify their illegal behavior through the rationalization that "unfair" and "arbitrary" regulatory policies of the National Marine Fisheries Service have limited their right to make a living.

"Normative factors, such as moral obligation and peer and community pressure often induce fishers to be law-abiding despite potential illegal gains," King and Sutinen wrote. "However, normative factors favoring compliance ... are weak because many fishers believe recent fishery management decisions were not justified and that planned stock rebuilding targets and schedules are arbitrary and unfair.

"Until this situation changes," the authors wrote, "more enforcement and more certain and meaningful penalties will be needed to improve compliance."

They recommended "aggressive targeting of frequent violators and criminal penalties" as well as lifetime fishing bans for the worst recidivists.

King is a research professor at the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, and Sutinen is a professor at the University of Rhode Island's Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics.

Sutinen is also the co-author of a recent major report — not a scientific paper, but a high production value, political policy prescription — by the Pew Environment Group, a subsidiary of the Pew Charitable Trusts, organized in the 1990s by descendants of the founder of the Sun Oil Co. and still controlled by scions of Sunoco and its former officers.

That report, titled "One Last Chance: the Economic Case for a New Approach to Fisheries Management in New England," added to the loudening drumbeat nationally by Pew interests and their allies for a conversion of the wild stocks into negotiable allocations known as "catch shares."

Although the form of the study and its forum for presentation is scientific, the methodology involved statistical screens, public opinion surveys, the extrapolation of data, projections and estimates. If it is to be considered science, the discipline is polling.

For example, based on surveys and interviews, the authors reported that fishermen estimated the magnitude of illegal catches as about 12 percent of the total, but that enforcement agents estimated the illegal portion at about 24 percent.

"If the actual percentage is somewhere in between these two estimates," they wrote, "these results indicate a significant increase in the illegal harvest compared to earlier surveys."

Opinions varied predictably between the groups on virtually all questions.

Thirty-seven percent of the fishermen, 61 percent of fishery managers and 80 percent of enforcement officials responding to queries believe the "combined adverse impact" of the illegal catching is "either significant, highly significant or extremely significant."

"Only" 27 percent of fishers, 12 percent of managers and 2 percent of enforcers believe the cheating has no "significant impact" on the health of the fishery.

Reaction to the report, too, was predictable.

An industry representative and the state legislative delegation for Gloucester both questioned the timing of the report by King and Sutinen.

"The King-Sutinen paper urging more aggressive tactics was submitted on March 19, and accepted on April 9," said Robert B. Vanasse, executive director of the Project to Save Seafood and Ocean Resources. "Its release today — two months after acceptance in the immediate wake of Dr. Lubchenco's request for review of enforcement practices — constitutes most interesting timing."

State Sen. Bruce Tarr and state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante called the timing of the release "ironic."

"The suggestion that this report, which uses inadequate, inaccurate, academic models, which wrongly assumes that every fisherman secretly desires to catch the last cod fish, is equal to the real-life experiences of real people who have been the subject of prosecutorial abuses is a disservice to honest people who respect our ocean's resources and their roles as stewards," Gloucester's state lawmakers said in their prepared statement.

"Dr. Dennis King's research paper was an independent project commissioned several years ago by the University of Maryland," said Andy Cohen, NOAA special agent in charge of New England law enforcement. "It is a peer-reviewed result of information gathered from industry, government and non government organizations."

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com