We show that non-uniqueness of the Leray-Hopf solutions of the Navier--Stokes equation on the hyperbolic plane observed in arXiv:1006.2819 is a consequence of the Hodge decomposition. We show that this phenomenon does not occur on the hyperbolic spaces of higher dimension. We also describe the corresponding general Hamiltonian setting of hydrodynamics on complete Riemannian manifolds, which includes the hyperbolic setting.