MELBOURNE, Australia (RNN) - All the teenager did was step into the water, and it left him bleeding profusely.
A suspected attack by sea lice hospitalized 16-year-old Sam Kanizay of Melbourne.
He felt sore after a football match and stuck his feet into the water at a Brighton beach near Melbourne, the West Australian reported.
When he stepped back onto the beach, he was bleeding profusely.
Jarrod Kanizay said his son described a feeling of having sand on his legs before he noticed all the blood.
"He went back to his shoes and what he found was blood on his legs," he said. "They ate through Sam’s skin and made it bleed profusely."
"It took a while to get all the blood off and it came back pretty quickly," Sam Kanizay told 3AW. "It sort of looked like hundreds of little pin holes, or pin type bites, distributed all over my ankle and the top of my foot."
While investigating the trauma to his son, Jarrod Kanizay put meat in a net in the water and recorded dozens of sea creatures nibbling on the meat.
The teen's severe lacerations have perplexed doctors and scientists, who are not entirely convinced the culprit is sea lice, the New York Times said.
Besides sea lice, creatures that could be blame for the teen's injuries include amphipods, jellyfish larvae and a stringray.
Sea lice, small parasites that primarily affect fish, tends to cause an itchy rash, a report posted by the Florida Department of Health said.
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