A teen living on the British Isles decided to walk into the water off the coast of Brighton at Dendy Street Beach. While he was standing in the water, the waves would lap at his legs and cool down his skin. However, the teen Sam Kanizay soon began to notice something bizarre. It looked like blood was seeping from his legs, and as he walked back toward his home, he was “leaving a path of blood” along the beach.

Once home, Sam’s father, Jarod, and his fourteen-year-old sister Gabby helped him into the shower, where they helped the injured teen remove the blood from his lower legs. However, the blood did not stop weeping from Sam’s flesh. There seemed to be dozens of pinprick-sized holes along his legs, and there was nothing they could do at home to stop the bleeding. That’s when they made the wise decision to rush Sam to the Sandringham Hospital emergency department, where he was put on painkillers to dull the pain in his legs as well as antibiotics to reduce the risk of developing an infection. The doctors also drew some blood to run blood tests to see if they could figure out what happened to his legs after he stepped into the water off the shore of Dendy Street Beach in Brighton.

Later on Sunday morning, in the early morning hours, Sam was transferred to the Dandenong Hospital for more testing to see if the results could help doctors figure out what happened to his lower legs.

By Sunday afternoon, the teen’s legs were still weeping blood. Doctors still did not have any answers about what could be causing the pain and suffering after a simple dip in the beachfront water.

At that point, a nurse suggested that the boy might have been attacked by a group of sea lice, “but it was just a guess” and something she could not immediately confirm.

In another incident involving Sandringham Bay, Nick Murray and his son Will, thirteen, stood in the bay water for about ten minutes. When they removed their feet from the water, they found themselves to be bleeding from their feet. This father-son duo believes the sea lice are to blame for their pain and suffering.

The University of Melbourne marine biologist Professor Michael Keough argued that sea lice could very well have caused so much pain and suffering to these Brits looking for a quick dip in the water.

Professor Keough said, “They’re scavengers who’ll clean up dead fish and feed on living tissue. They’re mostly less than a centimeter long, and so the bites they make are pretty small, and so that’s more consistent with pinprick size marks.”

“It’s just food for them. Especially if he’s been standing around for a long time, it’s the chance for more of them to come in and start biting. Just be attracted to a little bit of blood. And if he’s standing in the water and he’s cold and may not notice a whole lot of little bites,” he added.

Sam’s case remains a mystery.

“It was a bit of a freak thing to happen. I’m not really sure what to think of it,” Sam said on Sunday.