Irwin, 44, tangled with some of the world's most dangerous animals but he died in an extremely rare attack by a normally placid sea creature while he was diving on a reef off Port Douglas in northern Queensland.
"He came over the top of a stingray and the stingray's barb went up and went into his chest and put a hole into his heart," Irwin's shocked manager John Stainton told reporters in Cairns, south of Port Douglas.
A helicopter rushed paramedics to nearby Low Isles where Irwin was taken for treatment, but he was dead before they arrived, emergency officials said.
"It became clear fairly soon that he had non-survivable injuries," Dr. Ed O'Loughlin, who treated Irwin, told Nine Network television.
"He had a penetrating injury to the left front of his chest. He had lost his pulse and wasn't breathing," he said.
Irwin's death was likely only the third recorded fatal stingray attack in Australia, experts said. They said stingray venom was agonizingly painful but not lethal, although the barb was capable of causing horrific injuries like a knife or bayonet.
"It's not the going in, it's the coming out," Australian Venom Research Unit deputy director Dr Bryan Fry told Reuters.
this guy was great... RIP Steve
Wow... I loved that mans energy.... Very informative.....
