‘Sea bug’ creatures: Bloody attack on Melbourne teen’s legs identified as amphipods

The creatures behind an alarming incident in Brighton over the weekend are identified as amphipods, and they usually don’t go around attacking people like piranhas, a marine biologist says.

Melbourne teenager, Sam Kanizay, went for a half-hour-long dip at Dendy Street Beach in Brighton on Sunday and came out with his legs and feet covered in blood.

When he arrived home, still bleeding profusely from hundreds of little pinhole bites all over his legs, his father Jarrod Kanizay described the scene as “horror movie-ish”.

Mr Kanizay returned to the beach with Sam’s siblings the next day to see if they could collect some of the culprits.

“I went out to the same distance and same area that Sam was in, and we loaded the net up with some bloodied meat, some bones, and after 15 minutes I came out of the water,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne.

“We caught thousands of little mite-type characters, we took them home in the Esky, and we were playing scientists for an hour thereafter, putting them in different dishes and feeding them different things.

Source: ‘Sea bug’ creatures behind bloody attack on Melbourne teen’s legs identified as amphipods – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)