An attack of carnivorous Sea Fleas at a Melbourne beach
theage.com.au
theage.com.au
Listening to a friend of mine who works in the Sea Police here in the North of Australia - it sounds like if you ever needed to bump off anyone with little chance of getting caught, then throwing them off your boat in the Arafura Sea should do the trick.
Usually when people drown, their bodies tend to bloat and they tend to float until found by search parties, but in this particular sea, the sea slugs will usually bore holes in a dead body so that the gases escape, and the body sinks to the ocean bed. They almost never find anyone who has gone overboard accidentally or intentionally in these waters, according to him.
The sea louse (or one type of it) is a parasite that famously eats the tongues of fish and "replace" the tongue by lodging themselves in the mouth of the fish. [1]
They also had an "expert" speculating about jellyfish larvae, which are colloquially (but incorrectly) also called sea lice, but they are not capable of biting, only stinging.
Reminds me of that joke website (is it poisonous?). The first question was "Are you in Australia?" and if you confirmed you are, the answer was automatic "YES"...
http://www.bobinoz.com/blog/12250/australias-most-dangerous-...
One of the remarkable things about the country is how few people die from the many venomous species there.
I'd imagine they do hurt thought, but so would a dog bite I guess.
Brighton, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane
Brighton, South Australia, a coastal suburb of Adelaide
Brighton, Tasmania
Brighton, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne
Brighton, Western Australia, a suburb of Perth
Brighton-Le-Sands, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney
I think Australia must be unique in having at least one venomous/poisonous species of fish, amphibian, reptile and mammal.
I wonder if in the case of the guy with wounded legs there was more than one actor involved.
That's true of every continent.
Not sure what authority suggested sea lice first. Growing up in South Florida, I can say sea lice are much more annoying than these blood sucking fleas he ran into. The former are basically mosquitos of the ocean. Hours after swimming, you're itching for days from tiny bug bites. At any rate, sounds like the kid has some sort of hemophilia that made matters worse and created a viral scare. He got off easy.