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A recent court decision in Washington DC upholds controversial fishing closures in the Gulf of Maine. The closures were established last year to protect fragile fisheries—and they weren’t the first. After the New England cod fishery collapsed in the mid nineties, an area of ocean roughly one fifth the size of New Hampshire was designated off limits to ground fishing. But even after seven years without trawling in this area of the Gulf of Maine, the number of cod is still low. Many worry that there’s something else going on below the surface that could limit the fish population from bouncing back. As NHPR’s Kerry Grens reports, that something is likely to be found at the bottom of the ocean.