There’s A Mystery Sea Bug Eating Flesh Now, So I’m Done With The Ocean
It's been real, ocean.
Look, we’ve had a good run. When we found out about rip tides, we put up flags on our beaches, we swam a little closer to the shore. When people were attacked by sharks, we installed nets. We got sonar. We prevailed. When we thought about the many, many jellyfish that could sting us, we kept swimming, safe in the knowledge that we could discreetly pee down our leg to ease the burn. It was worth it.
So, I’m sorry to inform you that this it: we should never go back in the water ever again because a 16-year-old Melbourne boy has had parts of his feet literally eaten up by some kind of sea bug. We don’t exactly know what they are, we don’t know how many of them are out there, but thousands of the meat-eating monster insects are currently being examined in a bucket full of steak that they’re scarfing down like it’s a $12 special at the RSL.
It’s over. It’s done. Get used to the disconcertingly warm bandaid water of your local swimming pool because the ocean is officially off-limits.
Some background: Melbourne teen Sam Kinzay was going for a swim yesterday afternoon at Brighton Beach — a popular Melbourne swimming spot — when he felt a weird tingling in his legs. As he came out of the water, he saw his feet and ankles were bleeding profusely. He wiped the blood off and more flooded out. When he got a good look at the skin, he found hundreds of holes. Holes. In his body. Holes where his flesh is supposed to be.
Melbourne teen left bleeding after he was attacked by a mystery creature during a swim in the ocean. https://t.co/VJlAoPtRpr #7News pic.twitter.com/mI4jO6iY5j
— 7 News Brisbane (@7NewsBrisbane) August 7, 2017
Hospital staff guessed that it may have been some kind of sea lice but didn’t have any solid answers, so Sam’s dad went back to the beach, chucked some raw steak in a pool net and scooped up thousands of weird little bugs (pictured in the video above). Speaking to The Daily Mail, the Champion Dad said “they grabbed on to the [meat] like no tomorrow”. “They’ve sucked the life out of it — all the blood.”
Sam is expected to be released from hospital this afternoon and is doing ok, but the incident has incited a terrifying debate about the creatures in the Australian media. A long line of marine experts have come forward to talk about their underwater nightmare world and take guesses at which of the many probable ocean beasts are responsible for straight-up eating this kid’s feet.
University of Melbourne marine biologist Professor Michael Keough told The Age it was most likely sea lice. “They’re scavengers who’ll clean up dead fish and feed on living tissue… It’s just food for them,” he said.
Stay out of the water.
Meanwhile, on Sunrise, marine expert Michael Brown speculated it could be either jellyfish larvae or piranha larvae and said, “I’ve been doing this for coming on 20 years now and I’ve got to say, I’ve never seen anything like this”.
Stay out of the water.
Common sea lice are, of course, known to bite. They’re the cause of the weird little rash you have sometimes when getting out of the water. Though there have been other reports, it’s quite rare for them to draw blood like this.
I’m sure there’s some explanation. I’m sure it’s super rare and the chances of being eaten by a horde of sea bugs are really slim. But frankly, I’m not sticking around to find out. It’s been real, ocean. Find some other sucker to flip upside down face-first into the sand and get their feet eaten by demon spawn. I’m out.