Deceased Person Recovered From Water at the 79th Street Boat Basin

By Daniel Katzive

In an all-too-common late spring and early summer ritual, police retrieved the body of a deceased man from the waters of the 79th Street Boat Basin Marina on the Hudson River on Monday.

An NYPD spokesperson told West Side Rag that an unidentified male was recovered from the river in response to a 12:07 p.m. call of a person in the water. He was pronounced dead at the scene and turned over to the Medical Examiner, who will determine the cause of death. Unless there is evidence of foul play, past experience suggests further information is not likely to be forthcoming.

The FDNY responded on land and water to the marina, but with the victim clearly deceased it became a matter for the police. Officers from the NYPD’s Harbor Patrol and Emergency Service units maneuvered the body from the underpinnings of the shuttered marina’s C-Dock to a point closer to shore and used ropes to remove the deceased from the water. He was placed in a body bag and brought to the area behind the marina’s dock house, out of sight of onlookers.

As former residents and boaters visiting the marina can attest, finding bodies trapped by the ebb and flow of tides in the pilings is a sadly common occurrence in the warmer months. Indeed, West Side Rag reported on a similar incident there almost exactly one year ago.

The NYPD was unable to provide numbers on how frequently deceased people are found in the city’s waterways in response to a query from the Rag, but a 2008 article in the New York Times explained that rising water temperatures in spring and summer speed decomposition and bring bodies to the surface, making the phenomenon more common at this time of year. 

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