Lagostas, marés e mudanças na comunidade de pescadores artesanais de Maracajaú, no litoral Potiguar

Abstract

Symbolically, tides can represent the changes occurring both in Nature and in human societies and their cultures, never static, but in processes of continuous changes, unpredictable to men, although cyclical. The communities of artisanal fishermen on the northeastern coast of Brazil, like Maracajaú – Rio Grande do Norte, wich we researched, are also subject to the dynamism of the socioeconomic changes that accelerate with the cultural exchanges resulting from globalization in recent years. For the realization of this research, in addition to the observation were used open interviews with several Maracajaú’s residents, as a form of reality’s perception. The pioneering studies of Cascudo about the jangada (1957), Doctor Tom O. Miller and his team of scientists: Francisca de Sousa Miller, Daniel Augusto da Silva and Clementino Câmara Silva (1988); Mussolini (1972), Diegues (1983) Maldonado (1986), Klaas & Ellen Woortmann (1987 e 1991), Grankow (1996), Silva (1988), Paiva (1997), Knox (2009) and other scholars of artisanal fishing in the Brazilian northeast served me as source and guide to my work. An incident occurred in the early 1960s between Brazil and France, the "Lobster War"; as a result, the crustacean began to attract investment of Brazilian businessmen.With the shift of the lobster into merchandise with high value abroad, the artisanal fishermen of the northeastern coast had to offer their services to companies engaged in industrial fishing. The indiscriminate and often predatory lobster capture, in addition to conflicts of interest with tourism entrepreneurs, led to a new crisis in the fishing industry, its consequences leading to the rupture of new generations: with the surge of new opportunities for activities and market positions, a portion of these young people veer away from the traditional activities of artisanal fishing as they seek new professional opportunities, working into Tourism companies.