A man’s body was pulled early Monday afternoon from the water near the Ocean Gateway terminal in Portland.

Police have tentatively identified the man as a 43-year-old Portland resident and do not consider his death to be suspicious.

Portland police remove a body from Casco Bay on Monday.

Portland police tend to a body that was recovered Monday from Portland Harbor near the Ocean Gateway terminal.

Portland firefighters and police detectives responded to the waterfront around 12:50 p.m. after a passer-by spotted a fully clothed body in the water next to the walkway to the cruise ship landing at the terminal.

Firefighters first tried to reach the body using fireboats, but could not get to the narrow space between the walkway and wooden pilings by the shore, and so launched a smaller inflatable boat to retrieve the body.

Police taped off the area near the terminal building to keep tourists from seeing the body, and a uniformed officer waved away a group of children learning to sail at Sail Maine to keep them from getting too close.

Firefighters transferred the body from their boat to a dock off the terminal’s fenced-off paved lot, where a crime scene analyst photographed the body. The man was white and wore a white T-shirt and dark pants. The body was picked up by a hearse around 3 p.m. to be taken to the state Medical Examiner’s Office in Augusta to confirm his identity and determine the cause of death.

There were no reports Monday of anyone missing on the water. It wasn’t clear whether the body had washed ashore or whether the man may have fallen off the pier.

Scott Dolan can be contacted at 791-6304 or at:

sdolan@pressherald.com

Twitter: @scottddolan

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