Farewell to a Great Entertainer

I love Steve Irwin. I used to watch the Crocodile Hunter all the time and I thought he was incredible. He knew how to mix over-the-top entertainment with education. It was exactly the kind of show that you would want to flip to on the animal planet when you were channel surfing. Despite his odd Baby-in-the-croc-cage moment, I thought he was a good entertainer and he clearly worked hard at what he did.

I was so sad to learn tonight that Steve Irwin was killed scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. He was killed by a stingray. The stingray barbed the entertainer in the chest after being startled. Fatal accidents from stingrays are completely and utterly unheard of. It's amazing to think that after all of his time with incredibly dangerous animals like crocodiles and poisonous snakes, a typically harmless animal killed Steve Irwin. I'm an avid scuba diver and I've dived on the Great Barrier Reef myself and never once thought of the stingrays as being dangerous. At most, a person could end up with a bacterial infection on their leg from a sting. Irwin was shooting a new documentary on the Great Barrier Reef.

He and his wife have always promoted animal and environmental conservation. I have always admired their efforts to make people more aware of environmental issues. I can only assume the documentary was going to have a lot to do with the depletion of the Great Barrier Reef and the species that have suffered.

I am so sad for Steve Irwin’s wife and children. It's a terrible thing to see a man who had so many good intentions die at such an early age. Steve Irwin was 44.