Steve Irwin, the quirky Australian naturalist who won worldwide acclaim as TV's khaki-clad "Crocodile Hunter", was killed by a stingray barb through the chest on Monday while diving off the country's northeast coast.
Witnesses and emergency officials said the freak accident happened while Irwin, 44, was filming an underwater documentary off Port Douglas in northern Queensland.
"Steve was hit by a stingray on the chest," said local diving operator Steve Edmondson, whose Poseidon boats were out on the Great Barrier Reef when the accident occurred.
A helicopter rushed paramedics to nearby Low Isles where Irwin was taken for treatment, but he was dead before they arrived, police said.
"He probably died from a cardiac arrest from the injury," Edmondson said.
Fellow-Australian wildlife filmmaker David Ireland said he was shocked and saddened by Irwin's death, adding that a stingray's barb could be as deadly as a rifle bayonet.
"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," he told Southern Cross Broadcasting radio.
"If it hits any vital organs it's as deadly as a bayonet," Ireland said.
Known around the world for his catchphrase "Crikey" during close encounters with wild animals, Irwin made almost 50 documentaries which appeared on the cable TV channel Animal Planet. He became a virtual global industry generating books, interactive games and even toy action figures.

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