Gov. Deval Patrick is asking the National Marine Fisheries Service to authorize a $3.2 million cooperative research project to determine if extreme regulations to protect the winter flounder are really needed and improve fishing methods.
The proposal culminates two months of brainstorming and research by the New Bedford fishing community, the state Division of Marine Fisheries and the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
The idea that the estimates of a severely weakened stock of winter flounder might result from incomplete science emerged from the Dartmouth campus offices of the School for Marine Science and Technology, the bailiwick of Brian Rothschild, the scientist who is one of two finalists to head NMFS.