April is usually the month for “floaters” in New York harbor. This year, after a particularly brutal winter, most seem to be popping up in May. “Floaters” are the bodies of the dead who ended up in the harbor over the winter and sank in the icy waters. Around spring time as the waters warm, allowing decomposition to accelerate, the bodies float to the surface. Of the typically 25 bodies pulled from the harbor in an average year, around half make their appearance in the spring. (To put this in perspective, the New York metropolitan area has over 20 million residents, so the ratio of bodies in the harbor to residents is around 1-1,000,000.)
Here Captain Bjoern Kils of the New York Media Boat explains it to Kate Mosso of Fox News.