The New England groundfishery, poster child for over-exploitation and the subject of intricate regulations to end "overfishing," is, at the same time, an example of the opposite problem — underfishing — federal catch figures indicate.

To be sure, there are a number of stocks that are deemed "overfished" or subject to "overfishing" — official terms for harvesting pressure that erodes the long-term health of the stocks.

And because the many species of groundfish live and are caught together — cod with haddock, flounder and hake and so on — protecting the weakest stock can and does have catastrophic economic implications on the industry and the fishing communities all along the coast.

"They co-exist, and some are not in great shape," said Maggie Mooney-Seus, a spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service which regulates fishing in federal waters from Maine through the Carolinas from the agency's regional offices in Gloucester.

NMFS is compelled to create recovery plans for each stock that is overfished, she said.

Figures for the 12-month period ending in April and posted last month on the NMFS Web site show the effect of its regulatory scheme, which is a hotly disputed interpretation of the intent of Congress in the most recent reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

Of landings from 19 stocks, only two — white hake and southern area monkfish — exceeded the target TAC or total allowable catch, which is the maximum sustainable yield. Those 19 stocks include 12 species — for example, the species of haddock includes two measured New England stocks, one in Georges Bank, the other in the Gulf of Maine.

The total target TAC for the 12 species was about 170,000 metric tons. Of that amount, less than 43,000 tons was taken, or about one quarter of the allowable harvest.

The most extreme example of underfishing involves haddock, whose vitality is one of the signature success stories since the first Magnuson Act established the 200-mile exclusive economic zone around America's coastlines and began the process of reversing centuries of unregulated harvesting.

According to NMFS, only 37 percent of the 1,229 million tons of Gulf of Maine haddock were taken and only 6 percent of the 106,731 million tons of Georges Bank haddock were taken.

Columnist Nils Stolpe — who is published by Saving Seafood, the industry Internet daily, and has declared "chronic underfishing (to be) the real New England groundfish crisis" — calculates the unrealized economic vitality from the uncaught authorized fish to be in the range of $1 billion for the first seven years of the decade.

"Assuming a conservative value of a dollar a pound for those fish," Stople wrote, "they didn't catch $280 million worth of haddock, cod, flounder etc. that they were allowed to catch."

Stople reached the $1 billion estimate by multiplying the unrealized revenue by a pass-through multiplier of four, which is conservative for the New England fishery.

Stolpe is not alone in identifying this perverse aspect in the way the New England fishery is regulated and governed.

Gloucester's Vito Giacalone, the industry innovator and architect of the Northeast Seafood Coalition's pioneering foray into harvesting cooperatives known as sectors, also has noted the regulatory anomalies of keeping takes far below the allowed volumes.

Using 2007 figures published by NMFS, Giacalone projected that of a total fishery TAC of 120 million pounds only 53 million were landed. Giacalone described the fishery as struggling with "dramatic underharvests of allowable yields."

He projected that "under a more efficient management scheme, landings could increase twofold in the near future."

Since that analysis, presented to a City Hall audience at the beginning of Carolyn Kirk's term as mayor in the early discussion of Harbor Plan options, the industry — backed by the states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire — fought a losing court battle to force NMFS to loosen its approach to restoring the entire complex of stocks to full health.

In the aftermath of NMFS's success earlier this year in federal district court, a federal legislative strategy emerged to allow the industry access to the vast stocks that are technically there to be caught but cannot be because of protections for the weakest link or links in the groundfish complex.

Last March, Congressman Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey, introduced a bill named "The Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act of 2009." The effort has attracted more than 20 co-sponsors — notably U.S. Sen. Charles Schmer, D-New York, and Congressmen Barney Frank and John Tierney, both D-Massachusetts — and it's drawn the immediate and total opposition of the Pew Environment Group, and its allies who have organized petitions aimed at convincing Schumer and the sponsors that the fight is not worth making.

"Why haven't the fishermen caught this potential windfall?" Stolpe asked in his column. "Not because they didn't want to, not because they didn't have the expertise or the capacity or the equipment, but because the unbelievable complex web of regulations dictating where, when and how they can fish wouldn't allow it.

"In far too many instances, they are forced to throw back fish that are either dead or that they know won't survive because to have them in possession would be against the law," Stolpe said.

"How can anyone conclude that the crisis in the New England groundfish fishery is due to a lack of fish or too much fishing?"

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com