www.vox.com Open in urlscan Pro
151.101.1.52  Public Scan

Form analysis
3 forms found in the DOM

GET /search

<form action="/search" method="GET" id="global_search_form" data-analytics-class="search">
  <input class="p-input-header__input" name="q" placeholder="Search">
  <input type="submit" class="p-input-header__link p-button" value="Search">
</form>

POST /newsletter_form_recaptcha

<form action="/newsletter_form_recaptcha" method="post" id="subForm" data-random-id="67bd1f85978d1840" data-submit-ajax-redirect="/pages/newsletters" data-analytics-class="newsletter"
  class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form c-newsletter_signup_box--form__1" data-analytics-placement="sidebar" data-cid="site/newsletter_signup_form-1693240879_3432_30472" data-cdata="{}">
  <input id="field_source" name="source" value="Presto::Site::NewsletterSignupBox__/science-and-health/2017/12/18/16777724/human-feet-beach-pacific-northwest-seattle-vancouver" type="hidden">
  <input id="field_list_id" name="list_id" value="Future Perfect" type="hidden">
  <input id="field_signup_source" name="signup_source" type="hidden">
  <input id="field_provider" name="provider" value="sailthru" type="hidden">
  <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__success" style="display: none">
    <h4>Thanks for signing up!</h4>
    <p>Check your inbox for a welcome email.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__body">
    <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__field">
      <label for="field_email" class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__email">
        <span>Email <strong class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__required-field">(required)</strong></span>
      </label>
      <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__input">
        <input id="field_email" class="p-text-input" name="email" type="email" required="" placeholder="">
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__error" style="display: none;">
      <p>Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.</p>
    </div>
    <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__disclaimer"> By submitting your email, you agree to our <a href="https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/terms-of-use">Terms</a> and <a href="https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/privacy-notice">Privacy Notice</a>. You
      can opt out at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google <a href="https://policies.google.com/privacy">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="https://policies.google.com/terms">Terms of Service</a> apply. For more newsletters, check
      out our <a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/newsletters">newsletters page</a>. </div>
    <input type="hidden" name="g-recaptcha-response-data[newsletter]" id="g-recaptcha-response-data-newsletter-67bd1f85978d1840" data-sitekey="6LeCFmwfAAAAAA4qBtkgg3WVJWVYGkt05yKT6gi1" class="g-recaptcha g-recaptcha-response " text="" style="">
    <script src="https://www.recaptcha.net/recaptcha/api.js?render=6LeCFmwfAAAAAA4qBtkgg3WVJWVYGkt05yKT6gi1"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      window.recaptcha_v3_site_key = '6LeCFmwfAAAAAA4qBtkgg3WVJWVYGkt05yKT6gi1'
    </script>
    <button type="submit" class="p-button">Subscribe</button>
  </div>
</form>

POST /newsletter_form_recaptcha

<form action="/newsletter_form_recaptcha" method="post" id="subForm" data-random-id="bdf008b17c2f24d5" data-submit-ajax-redirect="/pages/newsletters" data-analytics-class="newsletter"
  class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form c-newsletter_signup_box--form__1" data-analytics-placement="toaster" data-cid="site/newsletter_signup_form-1693240879_4669_30491" data-cdata="{}">
  <input id="field_source" name="source" type="hidden" value="__/science-and-health/2017/12/18/16777724/human-feet-beach-pacific-northwest-seattle-vancouver">
  <input id="field_list_id" name="list_id" value="Recode" type="hidden">
  <input id="field_signup_source" name="signup_source" type="hidden">
  <input id="field_daily_digest" name="daily_digest" value="1" type="hidden">
  <input id="field_provider" name="provider" value="sailthru" type="hidden">
  <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__success" style="display: none">
    <h4>Thanks for signing up!</h4>
    <p>Check your inbox for a welcome email.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__body">
    <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__field">
      <label for="field_email" class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__email">
        <span>Email <strong class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__required-field">(required)</strong></span>
      </label>
      <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__input">
        <input id="field_email" class="p-text-input" name="email" type="email" required="" placeholder="">
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__error" style="display: none;">
      <p>Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.</p>
    </div>
    <div class="c-newsletter_signup_box--form__disclaimer"> By submitting your email, you agree to our <a href="https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/terms-of-use">Terms</a> and <a href="">Privacy Notice</a>. You can opt out at any time. This site is
      protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google <a href="https://policies.google.com/privacy">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="https://policies.google.com/terms">Terms of Service</a> apply. For more newsletters, check out our
      <a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/newsletters">newsletters page</a>. </div>
    <input type="hidden" name="g-recaptcha-response-data[newsletter]" id="g-recaptcha-response-data-newsletter-bdf008b17c2f24d5" data-sitekey="6LeCFmwfAAAAAA4qBtkgg3WVJWVYGkt05yKT6gi1" class="g-recaptcha g-recaptcha-response " text="" style="">
    <script src="https://www.recaptcha.net/recaptcha/api.js?render=6LeCFmwfAAAAAA4qBtkgg3WVJWVYGkt05yKT6gi1"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      window.recaptcha_v3_site_key = '6LeCFmwfAAAAAA4qBtkgg3WVJWVYGkt05yKT6gi1'
    </script>
    <button type="submit" class="p-button">Subscribe</button>
  </div>
</form>

Text Content

Skip to main content


COOKIE BANNER

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing
experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site
traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out,
read our Cookie Policy. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use,
which became effective December 20, 2019.

By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking
technologies.


I Accept
clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile
Vox homepage


 * GIVE
   
   Give


 * NEWSLETTERS
   
   Newsletters


SITE SEARCH

Search Search


VOX MAIN MENU

 * Explainers
 * Crossword
 * Video
 * Podcasts
 * Politics
 * Policy
 * Culture
 * Science
 * Technology
 * Climate
 * Health
 * Money
 * Life
 * Future Perfect
 * Newsletters
 * More


 * Explainers
     2024 elections Trump investigations Maui wildfire
     Extreme heat Travel guide Artificial intelligence
   * All explainers
 * Crossword
 * Video
 * Podcasts
 * Politics
 * Policy
 * Culture
 * Science
 * Technology
 * Climate
 * Health
 * Money
 * Life
 * Future Perfect
 * Newsletters
   ✕


We have a request Vox's journalism is free so that everyone can understand our
world. Reader support helps us do that. Will you give today? × Yes, I'll give

Filed under:

 * Science
 * Explainers


THE HUMAN FEET THAT ROUTINELY WASH ASHORE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, EXPLAINED

Human feet occasionally wash up on the shores of the Salish Sea around Seattle
and Vancouver. Don't be alarmed.

By Umair Irfan Updated Aug 23, 2023, 6:20pm EDT


SHARE THIS STORY

 * Share this on Facebook (opens in new window)
 * Share this on Twitter (opens in new window)
 * Share All sharing options


SHARE ALL SHARING OPTIONS FOR: THE HUMAN FEET THAT ROUTINELY WASH ASHORE IN THE
PACIFIC NORTHWEST, EXPLAINED

 * Reddit (opens in new window)
 * Pocket (opens in new window)
 * Flipboard (opens in new window)
 * Email (opens in new window)

A shoe, sans foot. Shutterstock
Umair Irfan is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, Covid-19,
and energy policy. Irfan is also a regular contributor to the radio program
Science Friday. Prior to Vox, he was a reporter for ClimateWire at E&E News.

Yet another disembodied human foot in a shoe has washed up on a beach along the
Salish Sea in the Pacific Northwest.

The British Columbia Coroners Service confirmed this week to the Times Colonist
that a shoe found on Gonzales Beach near Victoria, British Columbia in July
contained human remains.

Officials said an investigation is underway and declined to give further
details. But the lone foot in a shoe joins more than a dozen in recent years
that have floated ashore in the region.

On New Year’s Day in 2019, beachgoers found a foot ensconced in a boot at the
south end of Jetty Island in Everett, Washington. The foot was traced to a man
that had been missing since 2016. The year prior, a man found a lone right foot
wearing a hiking boot wedged between logs on Gabriola Island near Vancouver.

The year before that, someone found a foot wearing a black velcro athletic shoe
with the tibia and fibula still attached along a different beach in British
Columbia. That foot was traced to Stanley K. Okumoto, who was 79 when he went
missing in September 2017.

It turns out that severed feet washing up on this coastline is, in fact, A
Thing. It’s been a source of fascination for Canadians, Americans, and the media
for years. It even has a dedicated Wikipedia page. The British Columbia Coroners
Service, the people you call if you happen upon a disembodied foot, even put
together this handy map of where shoes washed up, though it doesn’t include the
latest finds:

A map of where feet were found in British Columbia, including the most recent
foot. British Columbia Coroners Service

Though morbid and grisly, there is nothing sinister about these finds, according
to scientists and health officials. They aren’t the handiwork of a serial killer
or the remains of plane crash victims, as some have proposed. Instead, several
innocent scientific phenomena converge to periodically deposit human feet on the
shores of the Salish Sea, the body of water between Vancouver and Seattle that
includes Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia.


SEVERED FEET ROUTINELY WASH ASHORE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST DUE TO SEVERAL
CONVERGING NATURAL CAUSES

Officials on both the US and Canadian sides of the border are pretty blasé about
the whole thing.

“The BC [British Columbia] Coroners Service has been able to identify eight of
the previous 12 feet, belonging to six individuals,” the agency said in a
statement. “In none of the cases was any foul play involved.”

For starters, there are simply a lot of corpses in these waters. Kathy Taylor, a
former forensic anthropologist at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office,
which has jurisdiction along the Seattle-Tacoma coast of Puget Sound, told Vox
in 2017 that this is a consequence of having a densely populated area on the
coast (Taylor died in 2021). The metro area along the shores of the Salish Sea
is home to more than 8.7 million people.

Suicides and drownings are somewhat regular events when people gather around any
body of water, and as shoreline populations go up, the number of water mishaps
also increases. Coastal metropolises like New York City regularly go through the
grim ritual of fishing floating corpses out of the water in the spring as water
temperatures rise.

But why do body parts so often end up on the shores of the Salish Sea and not
around other coastal regions, like the San Francisco Bay Area? Parker MacCready,
an oceanography professor at the University of Washington, said the story is
simple. “Things that float at the ocean surface move with the currents, but also
are pushed a bit by the wind, and this can be significant in getting them to
shore,” he wrote in an email. “The prevailing winds here [around the Salish Sea]
are west to east, and so floating stuff in this part of the Pacific gets blown
to the coast effectively.”

That said, severed feet also occasionally wash up around other waterways. In
2018, a lone foot wearing a sneaker was found in a dumpster next to a boat ramp
on the Willamette River near Portland, Oregon. In 2017, a foot wearing an
athletic shoe was found on a dock in Charleston, South Carolina, and hikers
found a foot inside a tennis shoe on the banks of the Mississippi River near St.
Louis, Missouri.

We’ve seen this happen occasionally in other parts of the world too: Body parts
including a foot washed up in Rio de Janeiro, near the beach volleyball courts
before the 2016 Olympics. Body parts of tourists also washed up on a beach in
Fiji in 2016.

And why feet?

It turns out that in water, human bodies naturally disarticulate, or come apart
at the joints, so hands and feet often disconnect from corpses after soaking in
the ocean for a while.

“Feet easily disarticulate and when they are attached to a flotation device such
as a running shoe, they are easily washed ashore,” wrote Gail Anderson,
co-director of the Center for Forensic Research at Simon Fraser University in
British Columbia, in an email. “Notice there are no feet washing ashore in
stiletto heels or flip-flops. Also, today’s running shoes are much more buoyant
than in the past.”

Tennis shoes also keep decaying feet in a neat package rather than letting toes
and heels disperse, and footwear protects feet from hungry sea creatures, which
end up gnawing on other exposed areas like ankles instead.

“[A]rthropods will skeletonize and disarticulate a body quite quickly depending
on oceanic conditions,” Anderson wrote.

This image contains sensitive or violent content
Tap to display
The 13th foot in a decade washed up in British Columbia in December 2017. Mike
Johns/New York Times

Anderson found this out in a 2016 study using pig carcasses immersed in the
Salish Sea to approximate a human body. Previous studies reported that a corpse
could survive for weeks, even months, intact underwater. However, Anderson
concluded that the well-oxygenated waters of the Strait of Georgia support a
vast amount of aquatic life that in turn could skeletonize a carcass in less
than four days.

Pig carcasses and instruments being prepared for an experiment to measure
decomposition in water. PLOS One


THOUGH SHOES KEEP SEVERED FEET INTACT, TRACING THEM TO THEIR ORIGINAL OWNERS HAS
PROVEN DIFFICULT

“The ones I have seen are not fresh feet,” King County’s Taylor said dryly.
“They’ve been in the water for a long time, with significant decomposition.”

Often, DNA is too damaged to test from the days or weeks spent in salt water,
and usually there is nothing to compare the DNA to since most of the people
whose final resting place is the sea don’t have genetic material on record.
Other potentially identifying marks like scars and tattoos are lost to the briny
deep, as scarcely more than bone and ribbons of flesh return to shore.

Taylor said she is advocating for shoe size to be included in standard missing
person reports, a detail that could help identify the next foot that turns up.

As for why we’re noticing more reports of these feet on beaches, Taylor said
it’s partly due to the media keeping people on their toes, so now beachgoers
investigate whether a lone sneaker has a foot in it.

“The reason it’s become a phenomenon is it’s gotten a lot of press,” she said.
“Now people are checking.”

And of course, we in the media gleefully jump in with both feet when a story
like this crops up. Officials say that people who encounter human remains should
contact the police or the local coroner’s office and avoid touching them.

Update, August 23, 2023: This story, originally published in 2017, has been
updated several times as new feet have been found along the coast of the Salish
Sea.


YOU'VE READ 1 ARTICLE IN THE LAST 30 DAYS.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But
when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big
issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.
First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy, which makes it hard
to plan ahead. Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to
help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the
people who can afford to pay for a subscription.
It’s important that we have several ways we make money. That’s why, even though
advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek reader support.
If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality
information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$95/year

$120/year

$250/year

$350/year

Other
$
Yes, I'll give $120/year
Yes, I'll give $120/year

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via




NEXT UP IN SCIENCE


MOST READ

 1. What a UAW strike could mean for labor
 2. “Going shopping” is dead
 3. Meditation is more than either stress relief or enlightenment
 4. America’s unique, enduring gun problem, explained
 5. A visual guide to the 19 defendants in the Trump Georgia case

vox-mark


SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER FUTURE PERFECT

Each week, we explore unique solutions to some of the world's biggest problems.

THANKS FOR SIGNING UP!

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Email (required)


Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. You can opt
out at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy
Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more newsletters, check out our
newsletters page.
Subscribe





THE LATEST


WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THESE VIRAL, RIGHT-WING COUNTRY MUSIC HITS?

By Aja Romano


WHITE SUPREMACY IS AT THE HEART OF THE JACKSONVILLE SHOOTING

By Li Zhou


ZIMBABWE’S ELECTIONS HERALD MORE OF THE SAME

By Ellen Ioanes


THE WAGNER CHIEF’S FATE WAS DECIDED WHEN HE CROSSED PUTIN

By Jen Kirby


WHAT A UAW STRIKE COULD MEAN FOR LABOR

By Ellen Ioanes


THE EDGELORD OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY

By Ian Millhiser



SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER VOX TECHNOLOGY

Get weekly dispatches from Vox writers about how technology is changing the
world — and how it’s changing us.

THANKS FOR SIGNING UP!

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Email (required)


Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. You can opt
out at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy
Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more newsletters, check out our
newsletters page.
Subscribe
close
Chorus
 * Facebook
 * Twitter
 * YouTube
 * About us
 * Our staff
 * Privacy policy
 * Ethics & Guidelines
 * How we make money
 * Contact us
 * How to pitch Vox

 * Contact
 * Send Us a Tip

Vox MediaVox Media Vox Media logo.
 * Terms of Use
 * Privacy Notice
 * Cookie Policy
 * Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Info
 * Licensing FAQ
 * Accessibility
 * Platform Status
 * Advertise with us
 * Jobs @ Vox Media

Author Login
© 2023 Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved