User talk:MPMastenbroek

I'm new in here. Thank you for reading this. I am a diver (600 registered dives) with some experience. Reading that someone is stung by a stingray hundreds of times sounds unrealistic. I have seen stingrays dozens of times, ususal more than an arm-length away. They are wary, they look at you, you are sensible not to swim head-on, but sidewards to give them the chance to flee. If you do that slowly they let you come within a metre for a close-up picture. I know their capabilities in turning while swimming and their speed, their bodily possibilities in water. I have never met agression from a stingray. On wikipedia we have information about stingrays, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_injury

On youtube there is a stingray on land (caught by angler) where you can see the possible movements of the animal. You see it is not striking hundreds of times but is striking single times when possible in the minutes the film takes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Kf6WgQs5o (seachwords were: stingray stinging)

Since we try to describe truth on wikipedia, the story on the death of Irwin with an emotional description (hundreds of times..) of him being stung by the stingray, readers will wrongly understand the realistic way it must have happened. Since it is a very rare event to see or experience a stingray stinging, we will have to base our information on those rare events. If we think the (only) eyewitness description is important, than we could add some factual information behind it. Maybe add that the only eyewitness "describes it as.....(the hundreds of times in a second-story)" while we know that the single barb the animal has is put in the body of the attacker (as experienced by the stingray) by once or a few hits, until the barb has taken hold.