Sea bugs' attack Melbourne teen's legs during Brighton ocean swim

When Sam Kanizay, 16, felt sore after football on Saturday, he decided to soak his legs at Dendy Street Beach in Brighton.

Half an hour later, he walked out covered in what his family said were tiny marine creatures eating his legs.

WARNING: This story contains graphic images.

"I was icing my legs for about half an hour, waist-deep," Sam told 3AW.

"[I couldn't feel anything] because the cold water basically numbed my legs, I felt what I thought was pins and needles."

Sam said he walked home from the beach and had a shower, which is when he "started to feel it a bit".

"It sort of looked like hundreds of little pinholes or pin-sized bites distributed all over my ankle and the top of my foot," he said.

"We've had a few people just guessing that it was sea lice … but there was no real evidence to say what it was."

Sam's dad Jarrod Kanizay said staff at the hospital were at a loss to explain what had happened.

"They've called a number of people, whether it's toxicity experts or marine exerts and other medics around Melbourne at least … [and] yep, no one [knows]," he told AAP.

Mr Kanizay couldn't stop his son's legs bleeding when he came home and they went to hospital.

"He went back to his shoes and what he found was blood on his legs

"They ate through Sam's skin and made it bleed profusely.

"As soon as we wiped them [his legs] down, they kept bleeding.

"There was a massive pool of blood on the floor [at the hospital]

Source: abc news