Guía imprudente pone en peligro a turistas al jalar la cola de un cocodrilo en Río Lagartos

Mérida, Yucatán, August 8, 2024.- It is becoming increasingly common for tourist service providers in Ría Lagartos, Celestún, and Sisal in Yucatán to offer boat tours that involve practices that put crocodiles and people at risk, interrupting natural hunting cycles, warned Luis Díaz Gamboa, director of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Network.

A clear example was evidenced in a video that went viral on social media, showing how one of these guides lured a crocodile with his hand in the water and then grabbed it by the tail and threw it to the other side of the estuary.

In this regard, the biologist lamented that these types of practices are increasing, now that nature tourism is in vogue, in which, to earn extra money, tips, or generate more tourism, these service providers interrupt the hunting cycles of these specimens.

“They attract crocodiles by constantly feeding them with raw fish, crabs, or others, generating training. They feed them and call them by putting their hands in the water, causing the crocodiles to associate boats and people with food, which is why they approach the boats too closely,” he explained.

Luis Díaz added that with these types of practices and training, they are interfering with the natural network of these organisms, a situation that can be terrible even for humans.

“Now they do it with boats, the crocodiles approach, but if a tourist arrives and enters the water, these animals already associate humans with food and will go directly to them, and when they do not find that reward, they can bite,” he warned.

Crocodile bites tourist’s leg

In fact, he emphasized that there was already a case, last year in Sisal, where one of these reptiles bit the leg of a national tourist when he entered the Crocodile Lagoon.

The specialist clarified that the crocodiles that inhabit Yucatán, which are of the moreletii or swamp species, do not instinctively attack humans or are aggressive, despite being quite territorial, but if they continue to be trained with food, they will obviously associate them with food and this can be extremely risky.

For this reason, he called on the authorities of the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (Profepa) to reprimand the mentioned service providers and to seek to regulate this type of tourist boat tours, to avoid violations of crocodiles in their habitats.

“I suggest that in this type of activity, crocodiles are observed at a considerable distance, to see how they are, their forms, how they hunt, but without interfering in their habitats, much less attracting or touching them, because no animal can be touched without extraction or research permission,” he emphasized.