nomad4ever

What a tragic death! While filming a new documentary called “Ocean’s Deadliest”, ‘Crocodile Hunter’ Steve Irwin was today fatally pierced in the chest by a stingray barb, while diving off Queensland‘s Great Barrier Reef.

“He came on top of the stingray and the stingray’s barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart,” said Stainton, who was on board Irwin’s boat at the time.

Crew members aboard the boat, ‘Croc One’, called emergency services in the nearest city, Cairns, and administered CPR as they rushed the boat to nearby Low Isle to meet a rescue helicopter. Medical staff pronounced Irwin dead when they arrived a short time later, Stainton said.

His body was flown to a morgue in Cairns, where stunned family and friends were gathering on Monday night. His wife Terri was informed of her husband’s death while on a walking tour in Tasmania, and returned to the Sunshine Coast with their two children. He was 44 when he died.

News of his death prompted a public outpouring expressing shock and loss. Several Australian news websites went down due to high web traffic and talk-back radio experienced a high volume of callers expressing their grief, commemorating his passion and exuberance. Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard, among many other politicians, expressed his “shock and distress” at the death, saying that “Australia has lost a wonderful and colourful son.”

While he surely was a controversy figure, he definitely was a worldwide popular and remarkable traveller. As an environmentalist he bought “large tracts of land” in Australia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the United States, which he described as “like national parks” and stressed the importance of people realising that they could each make a difference.

I remember most of his shows on Discovery Channel, as he used a lot of unconventional methods to get close, provoke and film his “prey”.

Somehow cynic how it got him in the end…

or save article to your Facebook with 1 simple click:

Share

written by Chris