The rapid warming of waters off New England is a key factor in the collapse of the region’s cod fishery, and changes to the species’ management are needed to save one of America’s oldest industries, according to a report published Thursday in Science magazine… The lead author of the study, Andrew Pershing of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, said the gulf is warming at a rate 99 percent faster than anywhere else in the world, and as a result, too many of the fish aren’t living past age 4 or 5. Cod can live to be older than 20… Malin Pinsky, a biology professor at Rutgers University who was not involved in the study, said the findings help explain the northern shift in the cod’s population. Researchers reported this month that numbers are improving in the colder waters off Newfoundland and Labrador… “What we’re learning about cod are the same kind of processes that are likely to play out in a wide range of important fish in this and other regions,” he said.