Foot Loose and Fancy Free?

Ok, I'll admit it. That is a truly terrible pun (though not as bad as some on boingboing's article)

"RICHMOND, B.C. — A couple walking their dogs along the banks of British Columbia's Fraser River made the latest in what's become a series of gruesome discoveries of a running shoe with a severed foot encased inside.

It's the seventh such find inside a shoe along the West Coast from Georgia Strait to the northwestern tip of Washington State since August 2007."

This is a map of the area where the feet are being found.

If this finding is confirmed as real, that makes seven feet that have washed up in the area. When you consider how much of the BC coastline is uninhabited and how many wild animals there are who would be willing to cart off something like this before humans found it, the idea that we've found seven is a little worrying. How many more feet are washing up that nobody knows about? And more importantly, where in the world are they coming from?

A lot of theories have been put forth: small plane crash victims, an (unreported?) boating acident in the Fraser, missing fishermen or sailors, Serial Killer, or even the far-fetched Tsunami victims.

The similarity of all the feet being in running shoes can be explained by the tendency of running shoes to be well attached to the feet by laces and by their floating capability. A foot in say, a high heel, would slide out of the shoe, and a boot would likely not float. It is also considered normal for body parts to disarticulate during decomposition - the ligaments holding the limbs weaken and parts simply break off. This would be even more likely in an ocean environment where the currents would buffet the body slightly. Other body parts (hands, etc) might also disarticulate, but without a buoyant accessory like a shoe, they would be less likely to float to the surface.

So, that can all explain *how* the shoes end up on the beaches, but the why and where are still a little confusing. If this were the norm - bodies lost into the ocean returning feet to land - why haven't feet been found before this? Why now?

and just so you're aware...I was planning to end this post on a particularly bad foot pun. Consider yourselves lucky that I refrained!