Mystery Sea Creatures Eat Melb Teen’s Legs ‘Cos Nightmares Do Come True

Well, this is horrible.

A Melbourne teenager who was icing his legs in the sea after footy on Saturday night at Dendy Street Beach in Brighton emerged from the water to find his legs absolutely pissing blood.

Sam Kanizay, 16, says he hadn’t felt anything aside from a tingling sensation that he put down to the cold, but quickly realised that his legs were covered in tiny wounds.

Jarrod Kanizay

I wasn’t really thinking about being eaten,” he told reporters, and yeah, fair enough.

The blood wouldn’t stop even after he’d attempted to clean off in the shower, so he and his dad and sister went to the hospital, where a medical mystery ensued.

What had caused these pinprick wounds that wouldn’t bloody stop bleeding? According to the Sydney Morning Herald, they were still seeping blood on Sunday morning, and doctors remain baffled by what had had a munch on Sam’s lower legs.

Some people have suggested sea lice, and University of Melbourne marine biologist Professor Michael Keough reckons that’s a possibility:

They’re scavengers who’ll clean up dead fish and feed on living tissue. They’re mostly less than a centimetre long, and so the bites they make are pretty small, and so that’s more consistent with pinprick size marks.

However, someone on Facebook (always the most reliable info source) suggested that the culprit was in fact sphaeromatid isopods, a wee crustacean that falls into the general and informal category of “sea lice” but has a real taste for flesh. A tender lump of meat such as a teenager’s calves standing still in the water for half an hour would be very tempting indeed.

Regardless of what caused the horror scene, the fact remains that the ocean is full of monsters and we should never go into it. I don’t know what more is required for us to understand it; the ocean’s inhabitants are about one step away from taking out giant billboards in every major city saying “COME INTO THE SEA SO THAT WE MAY FEAST UPON YOU“, but still we blithely wade in, gormless berks that we are.

no thank u

Sam is expected to make a full recovery. Everyone else, stay the hell out of the water.

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