Highly Participatory Memorial Activities Offer Families Solace, Replenish Ocean’s Reefs
Atlanta, GA – Eternal Reefs, the company that places eco-friendly reef balls containing cremains on the ocean floor and involves families as much as they want in memorial activities, has announced its Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 schedule. The schedule features a placement in Pensacola, FL for the first time since 2005 and a return to Galveston, TX after the inaugural placement last fall.
Reef balls are an alternative to ash spreading in which families incorporate their loved one’s cremated remains into huge, hollow, structures that look like giant wiffle balls. The reef balls attract aquatic wildlife and quickly foster new marine growth, replenishing the world’s diminishing natural reef systems. Loved ones can participate in every step of the process including reef casting, viewing and placement ceremonies. Throughout the year, families and friends often visit the memorial reef site to dive, fish or boat.
“When families see the remarkable marine growth on their loved one’s reef, they know they’ve made the right decision,” George Frankel, Eternal Reefs CEO, said. “People tell us over and over, ‘this is just what Dad would have wantedÖto know he’s living and providing a habitat for vibrant marine life’.”
Eternal Reefs encourages family members and friends to be involved in creating their loved one’s memorial reef. If they wish, family members can be involved and mix the concrete and cremated remains. They also have the opportunity to personalize the Eternal Reef with handprints, written messages and other memorabilia in the damp concrete. There’s a memorial service, often with military honors if appropriate, a dedication ceremony and, then the experience concludes with families going out on the boats for the actual ocean placement. The entire Eternal Reefs experience is a four-day process, designed to be positive and healing for the families and the sea.
Dates and locations for upcoming placements through April 2012 include:
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Chesapeake Bay, MD (October 7 – 10, 2011)
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Pensacola, FL (October 14 – 17, 2011)
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Sarasota, FL (October 21 – 24, 2011)
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Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, FL (February 18 – February 21, 2012)
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Sarasota, FL (February 25 – February 28, 2012)
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Galveston, TX (March 9 – March 12, 2012)
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Southport/Myrtle Beach, SC (April 13 – April 15, 2012)
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Ocean City, NJ (April 27 – April 30, 2012)
An Eternal Reefs “memorial reef” is specially engineered to entice fish and other forms of sea life into the reef, building new habitats in and around the uneven structure. Eternal Reefs takes cremated remains and incorporates them into an environmentally safe cast cement mixture resulting in a structure which weighs between 600 pounds (2′ high x 4′ wide) and 4500 pounds (4′ high x 6′ wide). With every Memorial Reef, the executor of the estate receives two memorial certificates that identify the longitude and latitude of the memorials, which are marked with bronze plaques.
About Eternal Reefs Inc.
Eternal Reefs, Inc. is an Atlanta-based company that provides a creative, environmentally-enhancing way to memorialize the cremated remains of a loved one. The company incorporates cremated remains into a concrete mixture used to cast artificial reef formations. The artificial reefs are dedicated as permanent memorials while also bolstering natural coastal reef formations. Since 1998, the company has placed more than 1,500 Memorial Reefs in 20 locations off the coasts of Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia, substantially increasing the ocean’s diminishing reef systems. Memorial reefs can only go in properly permitted locations by the US Government. Contact Eternal Reefs Inc. at: www.eternalreefs.com
