Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin dead
 

THE stingray barb that struck Steve Irwin would have been as deadly as a rifle bayonet driven into one of his vital organs, Australian wildlife filmmaker David Ireland said today.

Mr Ireland, sometimes referred to as "the original crocodile man" and a world-renowned wildlife cameraman and film producer, said he was shocked and saddened to hear of Mr Irwin's death.

Mr Irwin, 44, was killed by a stingray barb through the chest while diving off Port Douglas in north Queensland, and it's thought likely he died from cardiac arrest.

Mr Ireland said while he had never met his fellow wildlife movie maker, they had a mutual respect which was shared among the handful of people in the world who worked "close up" with wild animals.

"What happened today is just an absolute shock," a shaken Mr Ireland told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

"There are not very many of us who work in the wilderness with wild animals; you could probably count us on two hands, there are probably only 10 of us in the world.

"Working with them the way the way we do things can go very wrong."

Mr Ireland said he had done a film a few years ago on stingrays, "hand-feeding them and all sorts of things, always trying to highlight that in all our moves there's a very real danger".

"I don't want to go into this because I'm thinking of his family and what they must be going through, but they (stingrays) are very dangerous.

"They have one or two barbs in the tails which are not only coated in toxic material but are also like a bayonet, like a bayonet on a rifle.

"If it hits any vital organs it's as deadly as a bayonet."

Mr Ireland said he had made the documentary on stingrays to show they were disappearing and "the problems they have surviving in the modern world".

"We get really close to them and show how they perform, but in one of the scenes I actually pushed one up into shallow water to make it strike to show how deadly they are," Mr Ireland said.

"Wild animals are incredibly fast and a lot of animals have got very efficient defence mechanisms.

"We're very vulnerable as humans, working with animals like that."

Mr Ireland has 25 years experience in filming everything from lions and leopards to sharks and crocodiles.

Known as the "Original Crocodile Man", he played the lead role in his own wildlife documentary Crocodile Man, which was distributed worldwide on Discovery channel in 1990.

It played for a record 12 months in the Great Barrier Reef cinema in Townsville from 1990 to 1991.

Mr Ireland said Mr Irwin's death had brought home the fact that the animals that he and other wildlife filmmakers work with are "very real, and the dangers are very real"

"I never met him. The sad thing is we never shook hands. It's a very, very painful day for everybody," he said.

Croikey!

RIP Steve. A sad day for adventurers everywhere.

yeah its ashame he was a good guy and loved by many I watched him any time I could to learn things I didnt know as I have a gator myself. Just feel bad for his family and everyone at the zoo that worked for him. R.I.P steveo

Here is my gator hes only a year old but will soon be as big as some of the ones on his shows.

Gottti
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Yeah a member posted about it on my board today, that's really awful. They're running a Crocodile Hunter marathon on Animal Planet... :(

R.I.P. Steve Irwin. The only Crocodile Hunter.

well truely he wasnt the first but he is the one who perfected it. David Ireland was the first one to start the stuff with crocodile hunting but Steve Irwin like I said perfected it and made it into what we have today and lost today.

I heard it yesterday.I loved his show :(.But as a memorial let's put a turtle in front of our names in our Instant messengers.A friend told me the australians said to do it :S

I was last year in his zoo and watched his show. He will be the only croco man on this planet.

R.I.P.

Rip What A Tragic Loss :(

It is a real shame that he died like that :( He is a legend