NEW ORLEANS – The Gulf of Mexico, south Atlantic and New England fisheries rank poorly in an environmental group’s assessment of how well fish stocks are being managed to save them from being overfished.

The Ocean Conservancy’s scorecard, based on fish stock reports from around the United States, found the fishery management councils overseeing West Coast fisheries – from California to Alaska – did the best job. Councils for the South and Northeast coasts have been less successful in dealing with overfishing.

The report gave New England a score of 58 percent on how successful it has been in ending overfishing and rebuilding depleted fish stocks. That ranking is just ahead of management in the Gulf of Mexico, south Atlantic and the Caribbean, but behind the mid-Atlantic and the Pacific.

The New England score, however, is 18 percent higher than it was in 1997, when the region was ranked at the bottom of the list.

For specific fishery management plans, New England was given a low mark for the region’s multispecies – cod, haddock, flounder and the like. But New England sea scallops and Atlantic herring were at the top of the scorecard with rankings of 100 percent.

“It’s in everyone’s long-term economic interest to manage the fisheries properly,” said Mark Powell, director of the fish conservation program at the Ocean Conservancy. “Analogous to the No Child Left Behind Act, we need a ‘No Fish Left Behind Act’ that would punish managers who are failing.”

The report found that four of the Gulf of Mexico’s major fish stocks are depleted while six are overfished in the south Atlantic.

In the Gulf, the four major overfished stocks are red snapper, greater amberjack, red drum and vermilion snapper. In the south Atlantic, the six major depleted stocks are red snapper, snowy grouper, golden tilefish, red grouper, black sea bass and red drum.

But managers with both the Gulf and south Atlantic councils said much is being done to rebuild stocks.

“On the whole, our stocks are getting better,” said Rick Leard, the deputy executive director of the Gulf of Mexico council. He pointed out that king mackerel, red grouper and gag grouper stocks have rebounded in recent years in the Gulf.

And major changes could be coming soon in the south Atlantic, which covers the waters off the Carolinas, Georgia and the east coast of Florida.

Louis Daniel, the south Atlantic council’s chairman, said the council may vote this summer on new rules for snowy grouper, golden tilefish, red grouper and black sea bass. For some of the species, the new rules could include forcing fishermen to catch bigger fish and fewer of them.

As for red drum, it has been against the law to fish for them in federal waters for about a decade while states have put tough limits on catches closer to shore, Daniel said. “We’ve done everything we can for red drum besides shutting the fishery down.”