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In the 1600s, the lowly cod was so abundant in the cold North Atlantic waters that, along with boatbuilding and timbering, it provided the foundation of the New England economy. In the 1700s, a "sacred cod" was bestowed on the State House in Massachusetts, where it hangs to this day as a symbol of the importance of cod fishing to the region.

But over recent decades, the once bountiful cod has been so depleted that government officials now say that it stands on the verge of extinction.

At a grim daylong session here, a deeply divided New England Fishery Management Council voted to recommend reductions of 77 percent from last year's catch for each of the next three years for cod in the Gulf of Maine.

It also recommended cuts of 61 percent from last year for one year only to the cod catch on Georges Bank, a vast area off Cape Cod, which was named for the fish. The council's recommendations are subject to approval by the federal government, which is expected to put them in place by May 1.

"We are headed, slowly, seeming inexorably, to oblivion," said John Bullard, the regional administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a member of the council, as he explained his support for the catch limits. "I do not deny the costs that are going to be paid by fishermen, families, communities. They are real. They will hurt."

The problem, he said, is not government inflexibility, as fishermen have suggested, but the lack of fish. "It's midnight and getting darker when it comes to how many cod there are," he said. "There isn't enough cod for people to make a decent living."

But opponents said the limits would not help save the industry.

"Right now what we've got is a plan that guarantees the fishermen's extinction and does nothing to ameliorate it," David Goethel, a New Hampshire-based fisherman and biologist, said as he cast his vote against the plan.

Fishermen were furious with the result.

"I'm leaving here in a coffin," said Carlos Rafael, who owns a commercial fishing business in New Bedford, Mass. "With all these cuts, I won't be able to keep half of my fleet working. I'll have to cut down from 20 groundfish boats to maybe 5or 6."

Before the vote, fishermen had crowded into the meeting room, many pleading that the limits not be set so low.

"We have done everything that has been asked of us," said Paul Vitale, who fishes commercially in Gloucester, Mass. "I don't want to go anywhere else for work, as demented as that sounds."

The plan reduces the catch of cod in the Gulf of Maine down to 1,550 metric tons a year for the next three years; the limit was 8,000 metric tons a decade ago. The catch in Georges Bank would drop to 2,002 metric tons, down from 12,000 from a decade ago.

 "They're huge, there's no other way to describe it," said Tom Nies, a fishery analyst for the council.

At its last peak in 2001, Mr. Nies said, the industry made about $100 million. It made about $80 million last year. The new limits could cut the size of the industry for this year to about $55 million, for a loss of $25 million.

 But fishermen said the true impact of the cuts would go much deeper.

 "It's 80 percent of a really small number to begin with," Mr. Goethe said. He said the actual loss to the industry would be more like $60 million. "When you get down to cuts that small, there's simply no place to go," he said.

Frank Mirarchi, a fisherman from Scituate, Mass., who primarily pursues groundfish, said that the proposed limits would deprive him of his living and that the cuts would ripple up and down the coast.