BAR HARBOR – Conditions might not be ideal, but federal regulators announced Monday that the New England groundfish industry is not threatened enough to warrant emergency federal funding for fishermen.

State officials in Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island had asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to determine that the regional industry was in a state of disaster because of declining groundfish stocks and revenue. The NOAA found instead that groundfish stocks, on average, have been increasing over the past decade.

“NOAA has determined there is no groundfishery failure,” William Hogarth, the agency’s chief fisheries administrator, said Monday. “NOAA believes it is turning a corner [toward recovery].”

There was a decline in the populations of four species, but 14 others had gains, resulting in an average increase in all species of 249 percent since 1997, regulators said. The population of Georges Bank yellowtail flounder is up 209 percent, and that of Georges Bank haddock is up 500 percent. Cod, the staple of the Northeast fishing industry until stocks plummeted in 1994, has recovered 36 percent, they said.

Still, revenue from all groundfish landings in Maine decreased 25 percent between 2005 and 2006, from $15.8 million to $11.8 million, they acknowledged.

Many worry that groundfishing could disappear in Maine. With the decline of groundfish revenues, some are concerned that Maine fishermen already depend too heavily on lobstering, which last year grossed $297 million, the second-highest total ever.

Sam Rauch, deputy director of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, said the agency does not necessarily need to find that fish stocks are dropping to declare a disaster. A drought last year in the Northwest contributed to a disaster declaration for the ocean salmon industry on the Oregon and California coasts, he said, and damage to fishing industry infrastructure caused by Hurricane Katrina led to a Gulf Coast disaster finding in 2005.

NOAA cannot make a disaster finding based solely on overfishing, Rauch said. When groundfish stocks off New England nearly vanished 13 years ago, overfishing was listed as a factor but NOAA never made a determination what the cause was, he said.

“These stocks have not collapsed. They are increasing,” Rauch said of the latest estimates. “In this case, with the stocks increasing, you cannot use it as a justification for [declaring a] commercial fishery failure.”

How much money would have been available to fishermen would have been determined later by Congress, if NOAA had declared a disaster, according to Rauch.

George Lapointe, head of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, said Monday that NOAA’s finding paints too narrow a picture of the state of the industry. The 25 percent decrease in Maine’s groundfish revenues “sounds like a lot to me,” he said, and was largely the result of federal restrictions.

“It doesn’t matter how many fish are out there if you can’t catch enough to make a living,” Lapointe said.

Maine’s U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins issued a joint statement Monday indicating they were disappointed with the finding. They have asked NOAA to further justify its finding, they wrote, but a bill before Congress would provide $15 million in groundfish relief funds anyway, despite what the agency says.

“It is clear that restrictive regulations have indeed devastated the groundfish industries in our states,” the senators wrote.

Port Clyde fisherman Glen Libby, chairman of the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association, said Monday that he has seen more cod and haddock in the past year or so than in other years.

But some species – such as the dab flounder that Libby said was once his “bread and butter” – are still scarce. Restrictions on other species are severe enough that you can’t just replace it with another type of fish, he said.

Libby said his fishing income is one-half to one-third what it was in the early 1990s. The combination of increased expenses such as fuel, the slow pace of recovery, and the 48-day annual limitation for fishing groundfish don’t exactly make for a rosy future for the industry, he said.

“You wouldn’t prove it by what we’re catching,” Libby said of the government’s increasing-stocks assessment. “I absolutely hope that they’re right – that there is a recovery and we can stick around long enough to see it happen.”

Libby said no fisherman wants to take federal assistance, but that emergency funds would help the industry’s outlook.

“Is it going to be just lobstering [in Maine]?” he said. “Because that’s where we’re headed if something doesn’t happen.”