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A Portuguese citizen was bitten by a crocodile on Sunday on a beach in the Baucau area, north of East Timor, when he was spearfishing with a friend, he told Lusa.
“For his size, maybe three meters, if he wanted to, he would take me,” Fernando Lusa told Lusa, who reported injuries to his back and arm.
“It is an inexplicable miracle that it was not more serious and that it serves as a lesson to others and warns of the need to take measures to guarantee the safety of people,” he explained.
The attack occurred about 200 meters from the coast in an area of coral reefs where he was with a friend fishing underwater on Sunday morning, in the Bunduras area, about 45 minutes by boat from the main beach of Baucau, Wataboo.
“The waters were clear and the sea calm. We had seen a turtle and it is said that in these conditions there are no crocodiles. We spoke with fishermen in the area who say that there are usually no crocodiles there either,” he explained.
Madeira explains that at one point she felt a “great shock on her back” and, when she turned around, she could still see the crocodile’s body move away.
“We started swimming to the shore, we used a cloth to stop the blood and then we traveled to Baucau where I immediately went to the hospital, having returned yesterday [segunda-feira] for treatments, ”he said.
After speaking with an Australian doctor in Dili, he was recommended to travel to the capital for tests, out of concern about possible infections, and he is currently at Guido Valadares National Hospital.
Madeira, which has been in Timor-Leste since 2009 – currently manages a pedagogical farm with rural tourism in Baucau, the second Timorese city – explains that this was the second time she had an encounter with a crocodile in Timor-Leste.
About eight years ago, he recalled, he was with two other people also doing spearfishing a few miles away, at night, when a crocodile approached and got in the middle of the group.
“He came closer, made an attacking move, but I don’t know why he didn’t. At that point none of the three were hurt,” he said.
Fernando Madeira says that it is essential that, at a minimum, posters are placed on beaches where there are crocodiles and that it would be useful to think, especially in bathing or tourist areas, about placing nets or barriers that guarantee the protection of people.
Crocodile attacks in Timor-Leste are becoming more frequent, with several deaths and injuries in various parts of the country.
In the past, the problem was more concentrated on the south coast, but today there are attacks in various parts of the middle of the island of East Timor.
The most recent fatality recorded occurred in May when a Timorese died while fishing in the Ira-Lalaro lagoon in the eastern Lautem region.
In February, in Dili, a Timorese fisherman was reported missing following an alleged crocodile attack in the west of the city.
The Crocodile Attack portal, which records cases of crocodile attacks around the world, recorded six deaths in 2018 and six in 2019 in Timor-Leste.
Between 2007 and 2014 there were at least 123 victims of crocodile attacks in the country, 59 of which were fatal.
The impact of the growing crocodile population – the possibility even points to a migration of populations from the Northern Territory of Australia (where their proliferation prevents, for example, bathing on the beaches of Darwin) – is also having an environmental impact.
Crocodiles may be contributing to the decline in the number of turtles of a recently discovered local species, ‘Chelodina timorensis’, which affects other habitats in the country.
In addition to the myth of the creation of the country, the island of the crocodile – there are many rituals, poems and other cultural manifestations that honor ‘grandfather Lafaek’ (crocodile) – there are also those in Timor-Leste who see in the attacks a kind of punishment of nature against the victims, factors that condition the response of the authorities to the problem.
