I stumbled across a mention of a new urn called Genesis Biopod. This urn is meant to be filled with ashes and lowered to the ocean floor. The ashes dissolve leaving the urn to form “a mini marine habitat for ocean critters” as they say on their website. The urn can be shipped anywhere and individuals can fill the urn, take it out on a boat and lower it themselves. The urn only weighs 10 pounds and is 22 inches wide and was inspired by the shape of a tortoise shell.
This the latest in the ocean reef burial idea. I first heard of cement artificial ocean reefs created on land with pockets for ashes. Some companies mixed the ashes into the wet cement. The structures weighed hundreds of pounds and required a crane to get them into the ocean waters. These large artificial reef structures were deposited in close proximity to each other creating an underwater burial site. Florida companies like Eternal Reef and Great Burial Reef were the first to build and these reefs. Other groups like My Living Reef, began offering artificial reef urns off the California coast.
The Neptune Society’s memorial reef took the artificial reef urn idea and added statutes of lions and staircases going nowhere to suggest a lost underwater city, Atlantis or something.
Great Burial Reef now offers a individual ocean reef urn that is much more attractive than their earlier cement block version.
Probably it’s better for the ocean to have the big concrete monolith artificial reefs, but these stylish urns are warm, personal and beautiful. Visit the Product Gallery’s Ocean Reef Memorials page to view various types of ocean reef memorials. – AC