A teenager who was “eaten” by unidentified sea creatures has emerged from the water in what has been compared to a horror film with his legs covered in blood.
A teenager named Sam Kanizay was enjoying a day at Dendy Street Beach in Brighton in Melbourne, Australia, after finishing his soccer match, when he felt a tingling sensation overcome his legs while he was wading ashore. With the sun already setting, the 16-year-old couldn’t get a good look at what it was that was causing him to feel that way, but when he later stood under a street light, he was horrified to find his lower legs covered in blood.
Recalling the odd sensation, he had experienced and ignored, Sam said,
“I wasn’t really thinking about being eaten. I walked out of the water, saw what I thought was sand covering my ankles and lower calf so I just shook it off violently and it came off.”
“I didn’t really know what to think of it, it was a bit of a shock. A bit of a random thing to see,” the teen added. He noticed that blood was starting to trickle down his ankles and feet as he proceeded to get his possessions. He was bleeding heavily from his legs, and it wouldn’t stop.
When he got home, his head-scratching predicament worsened as he could not stop the blood from flowing out of what appeared to be countless minuscule holes. Jarrod Kanizay hurried his son to the hospital when he was also unable to stop the bleeding, where the medical staff was equally perplexed by the boy’s condition as Sam and his father were.
“My dad gave me this funny stare and I gave him a stare because we both just had no clue what was going on,” Sam said.
Sam went to the emergency room — As sam’s legs continued to flow blood for another 18 hours while he was still lying in the hospital, and physicians were baffled as to what was causing it.
Lather then, he was told that sea lice were likely to blame.
Sea lice are small crustaceans that consume both the tissue of living hosts and the remnants of deceased fish. Sea lice are scavengers, claims Michael Keough, a professor of marine biology at the University of Melbourne.
He said, “The bites they make are pretty small, and so that’s more consistent with pinprick size marks. It’s just food for them. Especially if he’s been standing around for a long time, it’s the chance for more of them to come in and start biting.”’
Sam’s father went to the beach to conduct his own research in an effort to figure out what was going on. It wasn’t long before he had what he wanted after arming himself with some meat and a pool net.
Jarrod was able to capture some of the animals and record the hordes as they raced to devour the flesh so he could show the doctors exactly what had injured his son. However, what Jarrod had in his possession wasn’t even sea lice, according to associate professor Alistair Poore at the University of New South Wales.
Instead, he said that they resembled amphipods. Poore pointed out that amphipods aren’t known for biting people, so he doesn’t think that they were the same insects that bit Sam, but this didn’t do much to explain Sam’s mystery. He said, “You can attract a lot of animals in the sea with raw meat. Even though it’s interesting, it doesn’t prove to me they were the ones that bit his legs.”
Sam’s situation is still being assessed by Doctors, the teenager’s father has advised residents in the area about the potential danger. As for Sam, he’s still in shock.
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Sources: Taphaps, Wethepvblic, Nationalgeographic
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