Robert Irwin Gets Emotional With Anderson Cooper About Grieving Steve Irwin

This year will mark 20 years since Steve Irwin‘s unexpected death, and Robert Irwin is opening up about how he continues to deal with the loss.

Robert appeared on the Tuesday, March 10, episode of Anderson Cooper‘s All There Is podcast, on which the CNN host and his guests open up about their experiences with grief. While Robert has used his platform to continue his father’s wildlife conservation legacy over the years, one of Cooper’s questions made him particularly emotional.

“Do you talk to your dad?” Cooper asked. Noticing Robert begin to choke up, he stated, “If it’s too personal, it’s fine.”

Robert assured him he was OK before responding. “I’m always closest to dad when I’m in the middle of nowhere, you know, when I’m out in the bush. And there are absolutely moments where I’ll be hit with this sense of, it’s warmth,” he shared. “It’s like something kind of wraps around me. And I will absolutely sit and just say, ‘How do I go forward? How do you move forward?'”

Noting that his father is a “constant thread” in his life and in his work, Robert said he sometimes deals with his emotions by letting them all go. “I let it all sort of pour out, and it feels like I’m kind of letting him in. And sometimes I sit and just go, ‘What’s next? How do I put one foot in front of the other?'” he explained. “And there’s no answer, but it almost feels like there’s a resolution that comes out of that.”

Robert was just two years old when Steve died at the age of 44 in September 2006. Steve, who became a household name for sharing the importance of wildlife conservation on TV, died as a result of a stingray barb injury while filming a documentary.

On the podcast, Robert recalled the first time he served as a “team leader” on a crocodile research expedition in Northern Australia. After putting up a fight to catch and microchip a large crocodile, Robert noticed something special about that particular animal.

“While I’m sitting there laying on this crocodile, there’s this very distinct marking in one of his scales, and I just had this like little epiphany. I went, ‘Hang on a minute, let me check this photo,'” he told Cooper. “And there was this old, old photo that I remember of my dad with a giant crocodile that he’d caught, like, 20 years ago. And I look at the scale and this pattern, and then I look at this, and then I look at where the tracker had used to be. And I’m like, ‘Yep, that is exactly how he attached it.'”

The crocodile was one Steve had caught 20 years prior. “And the craziest bit is we managed to use satellite technology to figure it out, and we caught him in the exact same spot that he did on an expedition completely randomly 20 years back,” Robert added.

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Earlier in the interview, Robert praised his mother, Terri Irwin, for serving as a “father figure” to him during his childhood. “I know a lot of people that have lost that sort of figure very early on and kind of family members and whatnot can kind of fill that sort of role. But I feel like that was my mum to me,” he stated. “She kept our family together 100% for my sister [Bindi Irwin] and I. But growing up, you know, it was comforting the fact that I had his presence around, that I could see him in videos and pictures.”

Referring to the Irwin family-run Australia Zoo, Robert continued, “Being here in the place that he built, it’s like, I feel him so completely. But it’s impossible not to feel that equal sense of emptiness of him not being here.”