With more news surrounding the tragic death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, I thought we’d do an update.  OK, I have a soft spot for the guy, it was a better world with him in it, than out of it.  I promise, no more after this one.

It looks like Irwin was trying to get a quick shot with him around the Australian Great Barrier Reef to help his eight-year-old daughter Bindi’s TV show. Bindi is to star in a new show for the Discovery Kids channel next year & Steve wanted to take the opportunity to give her a few good underwater shots.

Steve was co-hosting an Animal Planer special called The Ocean’s Deadliest with famed oceanographer Philippe Cousteau when Irwin took a break from filming to do a special piece for his daughter’s show.

His manager John Stainton explains, “His daughter’s doing a new show for Discovery Kids next year and wherever we get the opportunity we pick up quick little stories with Steve for her.

“He said, ‘I’ll just take the rubber duckie and go out and see if we can get some coral and fish and rays and stuff like that–just to do a soft segment for kids.’

“I saw him go off, he had the crew and the boat crew in with him and a cameraman… The next thing we heard this call coming in out of the ship’s radio that there’d been an emergency.

“It was a blur as to what was happening, I didn’t know who was hurt. I obviously did not think it was Steve. I thought he was invincible.

“In my heart, I think he was dead when he was in the rubber duckie, I don’t think he was alive.”

Sadly enough, conservationalist & naturalist Steve Irwin was given a warning about the dangers of stingrays & their barbed tails the day before he himself suffered a bard to the heart & died. 

Irwin & Stainton were aboard Steve’s boat Croc One when an expert from a nearby university lectured the crew about ray safety.

The sad, sad irony- which wasn’t lost on Stainton, “He was very used to them and in a lot of parts of the world tourists go into the water and hand feed them and let them crawl over them.

“It was only the day before with Jamie, our doctor that was onboard–who’s an expert from the University of James Cook Union North Queensland–that we talked about stingrays and the effect of the barb.

“It was so ironic that we would actually have this conversation the day before (he died). I related a story where a friend of mine had got a barb through his leg.”

Poor chap.

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