Found feet on BBC

[mat]

BBC news international has the story online about the 4 feet found washed up around Georgia Strait. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7418239.stm

I just read all four are right feet! A true BC mystery...

[Caramia]

What the hell?

[mat]

This is fascinating - the right feet have washed up on Islands in the Straight since last summer, the latest in Richmond this week. The police only released the information today that all of them were found in running shoes, and all were right. This, of course, begs the question - where are the left feet?, and, if 4 have been found, how many more are out there?

The coast line is huge, and the odds of finding one washed up foot, let alone four...

Love to read some theories from others

[KublaKhan]

Indeed. Very odd.

Perhaps the left feet end up on the Atlantic coast.

[mat]

The right foot found in Richmond has been ID'd as female (the others are male) and most likely came from up river, rather than coming from the sea. The ones found earlier are all in a region where currents might have taken them from one location, near Galiano Island.

Coast Guard and RCMP have said there is no single incident of 3 or more missing people at sea, but 2 maybe brothers who were killed in an air crash and their bodies missing from the wreckage. DNA tests should prove either way.

[victorian fan]

Most likely a boating or aircraft accident. The fact that the feet are shod has helped preserve them.

[mat]

The composite soles of most running shoes have air pockets to absorb shock - so when the feet detach due to decay, the shoe floats, with the foot intact, to the surface.

As a former CG Aux. cox I know following tidal and current charts (plus wind) is an exacting process. New wind/current prediction programs will help in placing the source.

Still a mystery though...

[mat]

Another foot has been found, this time a left one.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n...4-4d2975910dd7

The mystery continues...

[Rorschach]

They should do some kind of drift analysis like they did on Mythbusters to figure out if you could escape Alcatraz on a rubber raft. If only all that stuff you see on CSI was real and could be applied. We'd have a driver license picture and current employer and phone number of the feet if CSI was real.

[davek]

I've been working on a joke about this. It goes -

How deep is the water here?

Well, we've got at least five feet...


(crickets chirping)

Wow, tough audience.

[Caramia]

Oh god!


*GROAN*

[davek]

Thank you, I'm here all week!

[jklymak]

Originally Posted by Rorschach

They should do some kind of drift analysis like they did on Mythbusters to figure out if you could escape Alcatraz on a rubber raft. If only all that stuff you see on CSI was real and could be applied.

Exactly. Figuring out where something is likely to drift is infinitely easier than figuring out where something has drifted from. Imagine you have a cigarette and you want to know where its smoke is going - not too hard to get a pretty good idea. Now imagine you have some cigarette smoke and want to know where the cigarette is. Not as easy. Now make it worse by having only 5 particles of cigarette smoke - almost impossible.

[mat]

At noon today CBC reported yet another Right Foot (#5) was found today on a beach near the mouth of Campbell River. That is now 5 right feet, and one left.

I wonder if anyone has the movie rights yet to this story - it is an amazing 'whodunnit'.

[KublaKhan]

Originally Posted by mat

I wonder if anyone has the movie rights yet to this story - it is an amazing 'whodunnit'.

My thoughts exactly.

Isn't there another DaVinci's Inquest in the works?

[martini]

Originally Posted by mat

At noon today CBC reported yet another Right Foot (#5) was found today on a beach near the mouth of Campbell River. That is now 5 right feet, and one left.

I wonder if anyone has the movie rights yet to this story - it is an amazing 'whodunnit'.

I'm at a complete loss for words at this point.

[gumgum]

WTF is going on???

[martini]

Originally Posted by gumgum

WTF is going on???

I don't think anyone has a clue at this point. Very alarming an ominous though.

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimesc...6-fc8d9b2d98b0

Sixth severed foot found in Campbell River

By Katie Mercer
Vancouver Province

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Tyee Spit, where a sixth foot has washed up in Campbell River.
CREDIT: - retire.incampbellriver.com
Tyee Spit, where a sixth foot has washed up in Campbell River.

CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C. - Another severed human foot - the sixth - has appeared on a British Columbia shore.

The foot, encased in a shoe thought to be a right, was spotted by a woman collecting rocks for a craft project at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday at Tyee Spit just north of the Argonaut Wharf. The woman asked Sandra Malone, the manager of the Thunderpark RV Park to call RCMP, who arrived within 10 minutes with a forensic team.

"She thought 'Oh, someone lost a shoe,' and then she looked up closer at it and you could see the bone sticking up from the front," said Malone.

While waiting for the RCMP to arrive, Malone and her husband went to look at the foot, which was lying above the high tide line, about a metre from the grass, covered in seaweed.

Malone said the black running shoe the foot was encased was large and looked like a man's. Two bones were sticking out by three to four inches from the shoe's ankle opening. They appeared to have been cut.

"Oh my God, this is close to home. It just makes you think something is going on in this area," said Malone. "Obviously people are losing their feet, they've got to be dying somewhere."

The foot is the sixth found in coastal waters since last August. The fifth was found by two walkers on Monday, floating off the water in Westham Island in Ladner.

The first five included four right feet and one left foot.

RCMP have yet to comment on the latest discovery.

E-mail reporter Katie Mercer at kmercer@png.canwest.com
© Vancouver Province 2008

[mat]

I find this completely fascinating so did some research (thanks google and wikipedia, among other sources)

A body in seawater with an average temperature of 7 (BC coastal ocean temps) degrees celsius will begin to disarticulate (joints separate) around 21 days and be mostly decomposed after 39 days.

Unless a body is weighed down, it will tend to sink after 36 hours, then rise to the surface again as gasses expand. Birds and fish will open the skin, releasing the gasses, and the body sinks again, often sinking and rising 3 or more times until major organs are decomposed.

If there is still flesh on the feet, that reduces the time considerably between the death of the person and the discovery.

[Caramia]

This has got to top the "things that make you go Hrmmmmmm" list.

[Rorschach]

Wasn't there a story about a small plane crash in the Port Alberni area where a relative was saying she thought the feet belonged to those victims? Since they are saying the feet haven't been chopped off unnaturally, presumably they just rotted off.

From the Titanic exhibit I remember a lot of shoes survived for a long time and I imagine the buoyancy of the runners and their modern materials preserved them.

Just applying Occam's Razor, it seems like the obvious or simple plane crash story explains the feet. The feet parts were buoyant and the rest of the bodies are trapped below the surface with the weight of the plane on the other foot as it were.

[jklymak]

Could be something like that. However, it would be remarkable if anything floating in Alberni Inlet could ever make it into the Strait and up to the Gulf Islands. The mean circulation has surface water flowing out to sea. Not impossible, but highly unlikely.

Have there been other significant aeronautical or boating accidents?

[aastra]

I'm not saying. I'm just saying:

...the stomach of a dead transient (killer) whale recovered up in Alaska contained the remains of a moose. Apparently the moose chose the wrong moment to swim from one Alaskan island to another--something that moose, deer and other land animals frequently do.

http://www.whalesbc.com/

...transient whales have been known occasionally to eat animals such as deer, moose and pigs.

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/species-esp...e_NE_Pac_e.asp

[gumgum]

And spit out the feet?

[aastra]

Whales can't really spit, can they? Doesn't spitting involve the lips?