On an open sea deck, with the rolling waves of Georges Bank a mere eight feet away, Jon Brodziak cuts, and with tweezers takes a bone from each of the two inner ears of a haddock.

He places them in a small envelope for future study.

Then he does it again with another haddock. And again.

The bone is the otolith, which is used to tell the age of the fish; it is a far better measure than length.

Mr. Brodziak, along with several other scientists, is in the middle of a six-hour shift on the Albatross IV, in the pitch black night on the open ocean.

Georges Bank is a huge underwater island - 20,000 square miles and as large as the state of Massachusetts - that lies just below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

The bank is part of the continental shelf. More than 10,000 years ago, geologists believe, the bank was a high and dry island.

As the ocean rose, the island was submerged. Fish love the bank because it is a great source for food. Water depths are not much more than 100 feet and sometimes as shallow as 20 feet. Light from the sun penetrates to the bottom and supports a world of microscopic plankton that fish eat.

Pots and pans rattle. The television slides back and forth. Each time the bow of the Albatross IV slides up over the crest of a wave, something inside the 187-foot vessel bangs or rolls.

Twenty seconds later, when the bow descends into the valley of the next wave, the pots and pans bang back and forth again.

On this day, Sunday, April 3, the ship is on Georges Bank, more than 100 miles east of Cape Cod, so far from land it is not worth seeking shelter. The ship rides the waves at Cultivator Shoal, once a prime fishing area.

The old wooden sailboat up on blocks inside the shed at the Martha's Vineyard Historical Society in Edgartown doesn't look like much.

The white lapstrake boat, less than 20 feet in length, has not been in the water since it was brought to the society in December 1936 from Menemsha Creek. The paint has come off in many places. There is little chance she will ever float again.

The question of how cod stocks fell so low in the waters off New England is almost as perplexing as the question of how to bring about recovery.

The favorite reason - too much fishing pressure - is followed by other explanations, including changes in ocean temperature and degradation of the environment. Perhaps it is a combination of these things.

Pinpointing the cause or causes of plummeting cod stocks is key to their rejuvenation.

Linda Despres, the chief scientist aboard the Albatross IV, has a haunting memory of visiting Georges Bank as a 23-year-old scientist.

"I have this picture in my mind of Georges Bank at night and seeing the lights of over 50 ships going back and forth across the horizon," she says.

By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

THE MOST IMPORTANT FISH IN THE SEA, by H. Bruce Franklin. Island Press / Shearwater Books, Washington, 2007, 266 pages.

Eleven years ago, a group of Island fishermen went to Sandwich to attend a public hearing on the management of striped bass. We all sat in an overcrowded auditorium and listened. One commercial lobsterman stood before the regulators and complained too many striped bass were eating his lobsters and ruining his fishery.

An American president rarely speaks on a fisheries issue, but George W. Bush did so two weeks ago.

President Bush recently came out with an executive order directing the National Marine Fisheries Service to prohibit the commercial harvesting of striped bass and red drum in federal waters. A moratorium already is in place on the catching of striped bass in federal offshore waters for all commercial and recreational fishermen, so nothing changes.

Two leading Island recreational fishing organizations have called on the state Division of Marine Fisheries to end the controversial practice known as yo-yoing, which laces bait fish with lead that ends up in the bellies of striped bass.