The grisly crocodile attack June 25 in front of the Marriott Puerto Vallarta Resort has provoked morbid fascination, platitudes by hotels, lists of rules, and a flurry of reported croc sightings and educational material. The basics of the incident — a four-meter-long reptile lunging at and dragging off a 28-year-old tourist taking photos at a popular beach — fly in the face of PV’s fun-in-the-sun ambiance.
Research shows that even being near the ocean, especially at dusk and in the rainy season, are rules the victim broke. Crocodiles are stealth hunters that can remain immobile with only eyes and nostrils sticking out of the water before they lunge explosively at prey. People mistake their stillness for indolence. Crocs are difficult for humans to see at dusk, but they have excellent vision, including night vision. Experts recommend standing 10 meters (about 30 feet) away from the water’s edge in crocodile-prone areas to stay out of lunge zone.
But are people strolling the beach at sunset aware of these rules? I have swum at the same beach at dusk during the rainy season. It seemed the perfect time to avoid the sun’s burning rays. The Marina Vallarta beach has a black-and-white sign, much of it in Spanish, with small black profiles of a crocodile, a sting ray and a jellyfish, and several paragraphs of text. In light of the killing, it seems insufficient. And according to a survey video taken by wildlife protection group SOS Cocodrilo Nayarit the day after the man’s killing, anti-croc signage at PV beaches is almost non-existent.
Area newspapers called the attack “rare,” but was it? On the same day, there was a report about two Colima fishermen injured by a crocodile. In 2021, 18-year-old California tourist Kiana Hummel was attacked and nearly killed by a crocodile while swimming at night with friends, also in front of the Marriott. Another killing in front of the same hotel was reported in 2018, of a tourist walking on the beach late at night.
The hotel is almost next to the Ameca River, which defines the boundary between Jalisco and Nayarit, is home to many crocodiles and empties into the Bahia de Banderas. On the north side of the river, Vidanta Nuevo Nayarit, a massive, high-end luxury resort and amusement park under construction, is blamed for a vast displacement of crocodiles.
“It’s like Disneyland,” says Guadalajara wildlife expert and veterinarian Sergio Pavel. “And it’s 70 percent completed.” He blames this resort for “flooding the area with displaced crocodiles.”
Similarly, the Spanish network AJ+ Español reported soon after the June attack that Vidanta and brisk real estate development were the real culprits in the man’s death, not crocodiles, who have engaged in the same survival behavior since their lineage began approximately 240 million years ago—25 million years before the dinosaurs.
The local crocodile protection group SOS Cocodrilo Nayarit is on board with this viewpoint, asserting there is no overpopulation of crocodiles in the area and contradicting the talk among locals.
The guilty crocodile was apprehended after June 26, reports say, but according to Carlos Martinez, who works at a Jalisco wildlife protection center, “on social media people are saying that crocodile should be killed.” But crocodiles don’t kill out of malice, but to survive, he asserts. Meanwhile, social and other media are full of alarmed videos of croc sightings on and around PV beaches and roads.
The huge Vidanta resort under construction should “have an environmental impact assessment that supports the habitat modifications they did and binds them legally to environmental compliance,” says oceanographer Pablo Granados, who works in environmental protection in marine environments.
Reports by Infobae and Bloomberg’s El Financiero show that Grupo Vidanta did necessary paperwork for the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) several years ago. But since then it greatly increased its infrastructure without getting authorization for the expansion. Neighbors and a group called Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity have complained, but Grupo Vidanta continues its trajectory toward major unauthorized changes in the so-called Riviera Nayarit. Meanwhile, 16 species of local wildlife, including crocodiles, have been identified as at risk.
But oceanographer Granados asserts that “wildlife does need sound management plans … particularly if wildlife and human communities are meant to coexist.”
He believes Vidanta is missing a perfect opportunity to include a crocodile protection area and zoo as part of its entertainment complex. Popular crocodile collections exist throughout the world, many of them in cold climates, such as in Denmark and England, where the cold means the crocs must be indoors. But on Mexico’s west coast, crocodile exhibits could be in the open air, sealed off from the public of course, by netting and glass.