(CBS/AP) "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was videotaped pulling a poisonous stingray barb from his chest moments before losing consciousness forever, a witness said Tuesday.

The tape of the final moments Monday of the man known by TV audiences worldwide for his infectious enthusiasm in hosting wildlife program "The Crocodile Hunter" has been secured by Queensland state police as evidence for a coroner's inquiry.

Irwin, 44, was shooting footage for a new wildlife project he was making with daughter Bindi, 8, for airing next year in the United States when he was fatally wounded off the north Queensland coast.

Irwin's manager and producer John Stainton described the footage, which he had seen, as "shocking."

"It 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," Stainton told reporters in the city of Cairns where Irwin's body was taken for an autopsy.

"That was it. The cameraman had to shut down," Stainton added.

"This is just unbelievable," Nigel Marven, a well-known wildlife specialist who was a longtime friend of Irwin's, told CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips. "It's not the venom of the stingray. What happened was, because these things have got eight-inch spines, it must have lashed its tail and it was almost like he was knifed into the heart."

Irwin became famous through his series "Crocodile Hunter," which was picked up by the Discovery Channel in 1993 and became an international hit.

The station's owner Discovery Communications Inc. announced it plans a marathon screening of Irwin's work and will create a wildlife fund to continue his conservation work.

"Rarely has the world embraced an animal enthusiast and conservationist as they did Steve Irwin," Discovery Networks International President Dawn McCall said in a statement.

Billy Campbell, the Discovery Network's U.S. president, said the first time he went scuba diving with Irwin on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, they went through the lengthiest safety check he had ever experienced.

So when Campbell heard Irwin died while filming in the same area in a freak diving accident, he was "stunned."

"Everyone knows he was a risk-taker and he acknowledged that, but safety always came first," Campbell said.

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