Night swim leaves teen bloody

SYDNEY: An Australian teenager emerged from a nighttime dip in the ocean with blood streaming from his feet and ankles in a gruesome mystery that doctors have struggled to explain.

Sam Kanizay, 16, waded waist-deep into the water at Brighton Beach in Melbourne on Saturday evening, standing still for about 30 minutes.

When he came out of the sea he was bleeding profusely from the calves down.

“The cold water numbed my legs. I felt what I thought was pins and needles but maybe it wasn’t just pins and needles,” he told 3AW radio on Monday.

Washing the blood off his legs in the shower did little to stem the flow.

“It sort of looked like hundreds of little pin holes or pin-sized bites distributed all over my ankle and the top of my foot,” he said.

Kanizay, who was rushed to hospital, said doctors could not explain what had happened.

His father went as far as scooping some of the tiny critters from the ocean and posting a film online of them devouring small chunks of meat.

Some reports cited experts pointing instead to stingrays or jellyfish as the culprits.

But Jeff Weir, from the Dolphin Research Institute, said it was likely caused by opportunistic amphipods, a tiny crustacean that latches onto decaying plant or animal matter.

“They are not there to eat us, but sometimes they might take a little bit.” – AFP