Salish Sea Human Feet Phenomenon

Since 2007, at least 20 detached human feet have been found on the coasts of the Salish Sea in British Columbia (Canada) and Washington (USA). In total the discoverey of 21 lone feet have been documented.

The most recent discovery was in 2019, when people on Jetty Island in Everett, Washington called police to report a boot with a human foot inside, which the coroner was able to match to Antonio Neill, who was missing since December 12, 2016[1].

However, prior to the recent avalance of feet washing ashore, there have been earlier instances going back more than a century, such as a leg in a boot that was found on a Vancouver beach in 1887[2].

In Canada, the Coroners Service said in 2017 that foul play had been ruled out by authorities in all investigations and that the feet came from people who died either in accidents or by suicide, and the feet detached during the normal decomposition process. The feet were usually found in sneakers, which the coroner thought were responsible for both keeping the feet buoyant enough to eventually wash ashore, and for giving the feet enough protection from decomposition to be found relatively intact.

In the summer of 2007, forensic scientist Gail Anderson was conducting a study to understand how quickly a homicide victim would decompose in the ocean[3]. Because ethics rules preclude using a human body, she used a dead pig instead. Pigs have often been used in forensic research as stand-ins for a human body; they are roughly comparable in size and are quite similar biologically.

Anderson conducted her study in the Salish Sea. Her team dropped the dead pig into the water, and it quickly sank to the seafloor. The pig carcass was quickly eaten by a hungry mob shrimp, lobsters, and crabs, starting with the softer areas

It turns out that these underwater scavengers will work around bones and other tough obstacles, preferring to pick apart softer tissues. And unlike the bony ball-and-socket joints that join our legs to our hips, our ankles are made up mostly of soft ligaments and other connective tissue. So it follows that a sunken, shoe-wearing cadaver in the Salish Sea is likely to be chewed apart by scavengers, and to have its feet disarticulated from the rest of the body in short order.

What’s more, feet wearing sneakers would almost certainly float. Not only have gas-filled pockets become common in sneaker soles (and they’re visible in some sneakers found in the Salish Sea), but around that time, the foams used in sneaker soles started to be noticeably lighter, with more air mixed in. In other words, they’ve become buoyant.

[1] Human foot in boot washes ashore on Everett island, article appeared in the Herald. See here.
[2] Snyders and O'Rourke: Namely Vancouver: A Hidden History of Vancouver Place Names - 2002
[43] Anderson and Bell: Impact of marine submergence and season on faunal colonization and decomposition of pig carcasses in the Salish Sea in PLoS ONE - 2016