Feets wash ashore in islands in the Strait of Georgia. Photo courtesy Sunshinecoastcanada.com image:37804:2::0

It is baffling to the local police -- feet are washing up to the shore and they are not sure whether it is from the murdered victims or from the drowned victims.

In separate incidents, feet have washed up ashore along separate islands in the Strait of Georgia. Police are not sure whether all these three incidents are linked.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Annie Linteau said to the Associated Press that they are looking into all of their reported missing person files and try to match them with the victims. But with just the feet available, it will be hard to trace the body parts back to the people they came from.

Another concern is these feet might have traveled a long distance. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a former professor of oceanography at the University of Washington who specializes in floating objects, said the feet could have drifted as far as 1,000 miles.

He speculated that the feet might have floated in the buoyant shoes after breaking from their decomposed bodies, possibly from people who might have drowned in a boating accident.

Recently, a small plane crashed near the area. Four men traveling in the plane were presumed dead but their bodies were not recovered. Some speculate the dismembered feet might have come from their bodies.