Disarticulated foot find no real mystery, oceanographer insists
A seventh disarticulated foot was found by two men walking on the beach near No. 6 Road and Triangle Road Tuesday night.
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Updated: October 29, 2009 3:59 PM
Two men walking the beach near No. 6 and Triangle roads on Tuesday night found a Nike running shoe containing what turned out to be human remains.
Richmond Mounties, including the forensic identification section, attended the scene and seized the shoe and its contents.
The B.C. Coroners Service performed an autopsy and confirmed the remains were human. Others examinations of the size 8.5 shoe are now underway, but it appears as though the foot was disarticulated—a natural process in which the foot becomes detached from the rest of the body during decomposition—rather than severed.
This makes the seventh foot found inside a pair of running shoes discovered in the waters of the Georgia Strait in the last three years.
The first was identified in 2007 and associated to a dead man. Two female feet found in Richmond were matched in December of 2008, and two male feet found on Valdez Island and Westham Island were matched in July of 2008. A male right foot, found on Gabriola Island in August of 2007, remains unidentified.
RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau said there's been no evidence to date of foul play involving the feet.
Seattle-based oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who has made a career of studying ocean currents and their impact on flotsam, said he's not surprised by the discoveries, noting there are roughly 2,400 people missing from B.C. and that simple science can explain the discoveries.
Well-made shoes can float for up to three years, and they can protect the foot from being consumed by oean life and natural decomposition.
Human remains washing ashore happens all over North America, but it's just not something that's openly discussed or widely reported on, he suggested.
Ocean eddies tend to keep floating objects close together, thereby explaining why shoes from the same person can wash ashore close together.
"I don't find anything highly unusual about this," Ebbesmeyer told The Richmond Review earlier this year.
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