A sneaker encasing a suspected human foot discovered south of B.C. in Washington State doesn't match any of the shoes found on the province's beaches, the RCMP said Tuesday.

Based on a description of the newly found shoe, Sgt. Tim Shields said it doesn't fit with any of those found on the five feet that have washed up on B.C.'s coastline.

"Obviously, because they're describing a black shoe … this does not match with any of the running shoes that we have found so far," Shield said.

Authorities in Washington, however, have said the black size 11 shoe could have come from Canada due to the nature of the currents that move through the Juan de Fuca Strait, which separates Vancouver Island and Washington's Olympic Peninsula.

"I don't rule that out, being part of the ones they found in Canada," Det. Sgt. Lyman Moores, of the Clallam County sheriff's department in Port Angeles, Wash., said Tuesday.

"It's just too much of a coincidence."

Shields said either way, the RCMP will be following up with their counterparts in the U.S. to compare missing people lists.

The Washington shoe was found Friday on a beach about 50 kilometres west of Port Angeles on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, containing remains that appeared to be from a human right foot.

"Once it hits the Straits of Juan de Fuca and it had an outgoing tide, if it was carrying it out to the open water and it hit a strong west wind, it could kick it out," Moores said.

"We find things on beaches all the time that come from all over the world, so who knows?"

Five athletic shoes containing human feet have been found along the Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland since August 2007. The RCMP announced last month that none of the feet had been forcibly severed.

Police discovered that two of the feet belonged to the same man, and determined a sixth shoe found in B.C. in June was a hoax: an animal paw had been shoved inside an athletic shoe.

With files from the Canadian Press