Strange sea creatures leave teen’s legs bloody after swim

The Australian Associated Press reports on the case of Sam Kanizay, a Melbourne 16-year-old who spent about a half-hour soaking his legs, sore from sports, at Dendy Street Beach in Brighton on Saturday.

He emerged with his legs dripping in blood.

“As soon as we wiped [his legs] down, they kept bleeding,” Sam’s father, Jarrod Kanizay, said. “They ate through Sam’s skin and made it bleed profusely.”

And they left doctors stumped. But there have been theories aplenty, according to The New York Times and the Associated Press: Some were sure that sea lice, a group of crustaceans known as isopods, were responsible.

The head of the Dolphin Research Institute points the finger at another group of crustaceans called amphipods; another marine expert speculates it was jellyfish larvae.

As for Thomas Cribb, a parasite expert at the University of Queensland, “It’s not a parasite I’ve ever come across.”

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