Teen's Legs Chewed Up By Mysterious 'Sea Lice'

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Teen's Legs Chewed Up By Mysterious 'Sea Lice'

There are a lot of people who are afraid of going into the ocean. For some people it's a fear of drowning, for others it's a fear of the unknown, for some it's sharks. For me, it is officially sea lice.

YEP. Sea lice.

16-year-old Sam Kanizay from Melbourne, Australia experienced sea lice first-hand and I think it's safe to say he would not recommend the experience to anyone.

Kanizay had just finished playing soccer with his friends when he headed to the beach for a bit of a rest. He lowered his legs into the water to soothe his sore muscles, but 30 minutes later his rest turned into a nightmare.

"I walked out of the water, saw what I thought was sand covering my ankles below my calf, shook it off quite violently, and it came off," he told local news.

But the "it" wasn't sand. Instead, Kanizay looked down to see blood literally pouring out of his legs and feet.

"By the time I walked across the sand, about 20 metres to put my thongs [flip-flops] on... I looked down and noticed that I had blood all over my ankles and feet," Kanizay said.

Not knowing what to do, the teenager went to mom and dad for help.

"I didn't want to go inside the house with blood all over my feet, so I called Mom and Dad from my phone from out the front door," he said. "They came downstairs and my dad sort of just gave me this funny stare, and I gave him a stare because we both just had no clue what was going on."

"I could tell he wasn't in pain and he was calm so we stayed calm and we just thought, "˜We'd better clean off this bit of blood,' and then realized it wasn't washing away," said Jane Kanizay, the teen's mother. "We made the call immediately that he needed to be in hospital."

Continue reading to see how Kanizay is healing, and what these 'sea lice' really are.

The Kanizays rushed their son to the hospital, but upon arrival they were greeted with confused doctors. They tried to stop the bleeding multiple times, but it kept flowing from the hundreds of pinhole-size bites on the teen's feet and legs.

Doctors had no idea what they were dealing with. Sam's pain had climbed to an "eight out of ten" and the blood kept flowing. His dad, Jarrod, decided to go and figure out what had cause the bleeding in the first place. He returned to where his son was injured and submerged some raw meat into the water. He collected thousands of mites and took video of the creatures.

"On these bits of meat, they've sucked the blood out of that, and they remain attached to the flesh of that meat," Jarrod Kanizay noted.

Jarrod's video led to the identification of these mystery mites: amphipods, or 'sea lice.' According to a post from Museums Victoria, these tiny crustaceans "contained an anti-coagulant, which would account for the inability to stop the flowing blood and that the very cold water may be the reason Sam didn't feel the bites."

The sea lice don't care any venomous properties, so Sam is expected to make a full recovery from his injuries.

Richard Reina, an associate professor at Monash University's School of Biological Sciences says these tiny creatures aren't to be feared.

"It's a bit like if you allowed hundreds of mosquitoes to keep feeding on your arm for half an hour -- you'd get an extreme reaction then too, but it's not something that people normally do," Reina wrote. "There's no need to stay out of the water."

Meagan has an intense love for Netflix, napping, and carbs.