Yesterday, I was driving down the road, listening to the radio when I heard it: Steve Irwin, popularly known as The Crocodile Hunter, had died. Not to be melodramatic, but I know I'll always remember where I was when I heard the news. But a stingray killed him? How in the world did that happen? Although they do have a stinging barb, the chance that someone could be killed by one is so incredibly small...
First, of course, my condolences go to his family.
Second, I hope that people don't start freaking out about stingrays. Stingrays are among the gentlest animals you can encounter while diving, so let's not start calling for the culling of the animal or some other such nonsense. It was a horrible, awful freak accident -- not an attack.
Third, let's get some perspective on what happened. There's a ton of information on the Web right now. Let's try to whittle away the garbage and see what we're left with:
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Normally filming on land, Irwin was taking a break from filming a new documentary called Ocean's Deadliest.
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During the break, he decided to film a sequence for his 8-year-old daughter Bindi's new TV series about small animals on the reef.
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The cameras were rolling when Irwin was struck in the chest by a stingray's barb. Evidently, video footage "shows that Steve came over the top of the ray and the tail came up, and spiked him here (in the chest), and he pulled it out and the next minute he's gone."
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After being stung, Irwin pulled the barb from his chest himself, before he lost consciousness and died. I'm speculating here, but it seems possible that if he had not done this, he could've lasted longer. "It's not the going in that causes the damage, it's the coming out where those deep serrations kind of pull on the flesh, and you end up with a very jagged tear which is quite a pronounced injury," said Dr Bryan Fry, deputy director of the Australian Venom Research Unit. Doctors might've done something different.
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There was no evidence Irwin threatened or intimidated the stingray.
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However, marine ecologist Sean Connell claims he has "never heard of an unprovoked attack from a stingray."
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Worldwide, researchers know of 17 people who have died as a result of stingray venom. However, Irwin's death was only the third known stingray death in Australian waters.
- Hundreds of mourners have come to pay their respects for the man who made the phrase "Crikey!" famous.
- Cephalodpodcast points us to a report of another person who was stung in the heart by a stingray...and survived!
- UPDATE: A bit more here.
1. If he did pull that barb out, I don't know what to believe right now, then it was most likely a reflex action. I swim over stingrays everytime I do a shore dive, and they usually just swim away from you.
Posted at 1:59PM on Sep 5th 2006 by Bill Reals