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Mystery sea bugs shred Melbourne teen’s legs

His legs were left bloodied and gruesome.

A Melbourne teenager says tiny bugs in the water at a beach in Victoria ate the skin clean off of his legs, leaving them bleeding profusely.

Sam Kanizay had gone for a dip in the water at Brighton’s Dendy Street Beach when  when his family say tiny marine creatures began to eat his legs.

His father, Jarrod, said his boy’s legs were all bloody and they couldn’t stop the bleeding so they took him to hospital where staff were at a loss.

After having his legs cleaned and bandaged, Sam is recovering, but the mystery of the sea creatures was preying on dad’s mind.

So Mr Kanizay returned to the beach and collected a scoop of the bug-infested water, baiting the critters with raw meat.

In a shocking video shared online, tiny sea creatures zoom about feasting happily on chunks of raw mean as we must presume they did on Sam’s unprotected legs.

‘What is really clear is these little things really love meat,’ he commentates over the footage.

The story of the mystery bugs has gone viral since Dr Chris Brown shared photos of Sam’s legs as a warning about the bugs in the area – explaining that they could be similar to sea lice or marine leeches.

Both lice and leeches have agents in their saliva which prevent the blood from clotting and making it easier to feed – which could explain why Sam’s bites continued to bleed for so long.

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