A visit to a beach turned into a horror movie for a teenager from Melbourne, Australia. The exact cause is still a mystery, but small sea crustaceans may be guilty.
After playing football with his friends, Sam Kanizay, 16, immersed his legs and feet in the familiar water of Brighton's Dendy Street beach on Saturday to soothe his sore muscles, according to the Washington Post. What happened next was unexpected.
Jarrod Kanizay, Sam's father, told the Post that when his son lifted his feet from the water, he saw blood. A lot of blood.
"He walked home very quickly, he actually called me from the outside," Jarrod Kanizay told the Post. "He said, 'Dad, you'd better come outside.' Did I say why? ' He said, "Just go down!" "
They discovered thousands of small bites in the teenager's legs, almost as if they had been pinched repeatedly.
"There was no way to stop the bleeding," her father said. We just had to take him to the hospital.
At the local hospital, doctors tried to stop blood flow, but it continued to flow from many bite-sized pin holes in Sam's feet and legs.
Sam said his pain was "8 on a scale of 10," his father told the paper, adding that the hospital staff was baffled by his injury.
Investigating for himself, Jarrod Kanizay donned two neoprene suits, returned to where his son had soaked his feet and used raw meat to lure the unknown pests into a pool net. He collected thousands of mites, each about 2 millimeters long, according to the Post.
He later uploaded a video to YouTube of what he believes to be the guilty party in pieces of raw meat he provided.
The bleeding did not stop because of the anticoagulant that was released by the crustaceans, according to a Facebook message from Museums Victoria. Marine biologist Genefor Walker-Smith of the organization examined samples taken by Kanizay and concluded that the possible culprits were "amphipods lysianassid, a type of crustacean cleanser.
"Amphipods are sometimes called" sea fleas, "the publication says." Media reports have described attackers as "sea lice," but that term is usually used to refer to isopods, a different group Of crustaceans ".
Because they do not have poisonous properties, the damage will not be lasting; Sam will recover, according to the publication.