Abstract

For more than 20 years, a group of women from San Felipe, Yucatan, Mexico, within the natural protected area (NPA) “Reserva de la Biosfera Ria Lagartos”, has been dedicated to capture the “Maxkil” (Libinia dubia) which is a crab used as bait for the octopus’ fishery in the northern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. These women assembled a regular “fisher coopera-tive” to catch this crab. The octopus’ fishermen respect this group of women since these latter are the suppliers of fresh bait during the octopus fishing season. Actually, fishermen have created an alliance with this group of women since the octo-pus’s fishery is time demanding (diurnal activity) while crab fishing is only conducted during night until down; thus, fisher-men could not be capturing crab in the night and octopus in the day. Women obtain good revenues from the crab fishing which contributes to their family budget; however, social conflicts among women have reduced the members of this group. Efforts recently emerged from the authorities of the NPA and the Madrid Polytechnic University to implement a tourism alternative activity in which these women could conduct paid tours to visitors to watch the crab catching, but at the same time the women keep their fishing cooperative moving. The latter initiative is still incipient and a portion of the women is hesitant to participate. This work describes the women participation in the crab fishing and discusses advantages and disad-vantages of this tourism alternative to be implemented.

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