Fishing on an ocean ‘antiquity’
The Seamen’s Bethel is a historic landmark: It’s included on the National Register of Historic Places, a list managed by the National Park Service. Some sites on that list are federally protected because they were designated National Monuments by a U.S. president under the Antiquities Act. The Seamen’s Bethel is not considered a National Monument. But bizarrely, President Barack Obama did declare 3.2 million nearby acres of ocean to be a National Monument, preventing fishermen from fishing there. That’s just one of many indignities dealt by the government to fishermen like Jimmy Kearney as they work to make a hard living at sea. The Antiquities Act “has been transformed into a power without any discernable limit to set aside vast and amorphous expanses of terrain above and below the sea,” the Chief Justice concluded. Why does it matter? Because the government is making life harder for commercial fishermen who work an already-grueling job. more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 09:57
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