Coral Reef Burials

I was watching Disney’s Planet Earth, specifically the episode regarding the ocean and coral reefs, and at one point we see a few ships sunk that form the base for a new reef in that area of the ocean. There’s something almost poetic, the waste of war turned into something beautiful. Whether that’s too fluffy is up to you to decide, but I like the idea of our waste turned into something useful for something else—even if that something else isn’t human.

There was a mention in class of Green burials—which I’d never heard of before—and the one that specifically caught my attention was the idea of having a person’s ashes form the base for a coral reef. Off the coast of Miami, Florida there’s a 16-acre system of coral reef called the Neptune Memorial Reef, promoted by the Green Burial Council.

Source: Neptune Memorial Reef.

While the people at Neptune Memorial Reef don’t do the cremating themselves, they take the cremated remains of a person and form them into a mould and affix them inside the previously built structure. They place a bronze plaque at the site, and eventually little polyps take hold and a reef is formed.

Source: Neptune Memorial Reef.

The whole set-up looks a lot like what people expect Atlantis to—kind of space-age, all creepy and completely devoid of human life. It’s a veritable underwater empire, complete with roads, columns and a welcome feature, not to mention lion features like in old archaeological sites. It’s not quite the teeming mass of life that some reefs are just yet, but there are reports that biodiversity has increased 60% in the area since the installation. I’m just waiting for when it decides to look a little more inviting before I make a decision on it.

Source: Neptune Memorial Reef.

The thought of someone finding it later and possibly mistaking it for Atlantis—it would be an interesting archaeological find. All these plaques, which might not even be visible or still intact after decades of unchecked coral growth, with essentially nothing but names and dates, unlike a modern graveyard which might at least include a relationship with the family. And if this is mistaken for the remains of a lost civilization, if the coral even maintains the shape built into the ocean for it, where would the people have lived? This might be the oceanic equivalent of Stonehenge, as far as future archaeologists might be concerned. I just hope the good people at Neptune Memorial Reef thought to align it to the setting position of the sun at the summer solstice.