Fishing vessels in the Northeast that catch haddock, cod and other groundfish earned more money during the first nine months of new commercial fishing regulations than the year before, even while their harvest fell, federal fishery officials said Thursday.

Revenue went up because fishermen received higher prices for their catches, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report comparing the first nine months of the 2010-11 fishing season, from May 1 to Dec. 31, with the same period in 2009.

For 2010, groundfish boats in the seven-state region from Maine to New Jersey caught 192.1 million pounds of groundfish and other seafood species, down 7 percent from the 2009 season. The catch of groundfish alone totaled 43.6 million pounds, down about 15 percent.

At the same time, fishing revenue rose nearly $24 million, to $226.4 million. Groundfish revenue alone increased from $59.6 million to $62.3 million.

Fishermen received an average of $1.47 a pound for their groundfish, up from $1.20 a pound a year earlier.

NOAA officials said the higher revenue is a good sign for fishermen, but it’s too early to credit it to sweeping new fishing regulations that took effect May 1, 2010. Under the new management system, most fishermen are divided into groups, called sectors, and given shares of an allotted catch of each species.

The system is designed to give fishermen flexibility to respond to the market as species rebuild, but some fishermen say the allotments are too low and are killing the industry.

“There’s some good news in the report, and some news that I think people will take as being not-so-good news,” said Frank Almeida, acting director of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Falmouth, Mass. “We’re reluctant to make any general statements about whether sectors are working or not based on this interim report.”

Final figures for the full 2010-11 fishing year will be released in the fall, but officials said preliminary numbers suggest the groundfish catch for the year will be nearly equal to 2009-10.