'It Tasted Really Bad.' Woman Responds To Hudson Dive Backlash

NEW YORK CITY – A woman who posted a video of herself jumping off of a boat into the Hudson River with the Statue of Liberty in the background over the weekend has responded to widespread backlash after the video went viral.

Tik Tok user "Donna P" posted footage of herself jumping and diving off of a boat on Saturday with the caption, "Swimming with lady liberty."

The post received nearly 30,000 comments, including "You need to see a doctor IMMEDIATELY," from user "Icecaramellatte." Other comments included, "Sis you swimming with a lot more than just lady liberty," from user "andhewasvictor," and "She's gonna hop out with some superpowers," from user "Jax James."

In response to the comments, Donna P. posted footage of herself reading from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on how the Hudson is doing. Reading from the article, she said "You can safely dive in the Hudson on a hot summer day."

Many users pointed out that the following sentence from the NYDEC reads, "However, officials swimming beaches are scarce. At other sites, debris, tidal currents and boat traffic pose dangers."

Following footage showed Donna P. reading further from the Hudson information article. After reading aloud information about the efforts to clean up the river, she commented on whether it is safe to drink the water.

"Swallowing a few mouthfuls of river water does not significantly expose a person to these pollutants, but regularly eating fish may," she said, quoting directly from the article.

A third video featured Donna P. discussing why she decided to post footage of herself jumping into the Hudson River.

"I was really excited that I finally came to the Statue of Liberty and, you know, I'd never been up that close and I'm just like you know what YOLO and I wasn't thinking about the water, I was just like, 'I want to take a cool
Tik Tok jumping in the water,' you know swimming in front of the statue that is so famous," she said.

"The water was really gross though," she said. "It tasted really bad, I got some of it in my mouth."

According to her Tik Tok profile, Donna blogs about food around New York City on her Instagram account @nyc_li_foodies.