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Tuesday, March 30

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STAFF PHOTOS / ROB MATTSON /

Andrew Greening looks toward the sky as he embraces Melody-Rose Turner, bottom left, Hannah Phillips, top right, and Annalise O'Brien aboard the Flying Fish charter boat off Lido Key.

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Burial at sea

18 laid to rest within 'reef balls' off Lido Key

By TOM BAYLES

tom.bayles@heraldtribune.com

SARASOTA -- Clear skies greeted relatives and friends who gathered Monday to put their loved ones to rest two miles off Lido Key.

They boarded fishing boats and headed out to a spot where 18 concrete balls, each weighing hundreds of pounds, bobbed on floats in front of them.

The "reef balls" contained the ashes of people who chose to be buried beneath the sea.

"I'm so happy with the choice," said Annalise O'Brien, whose grandparents, Betty and Leonard Greening of Sarasota, were buried together Monday in a reef ball. "There's something alive about the ocean. It carries them on."

After cancer took Betty Greening, her family decided to inter her in a reef ball because the couple loved to take cruises and loved Sarasota's blue-green waters.

Before the family had a chance to complete her arrangements, cancer took Leonard Greening as well. So their ashes were placed in a reef ball together to continue a marriage of 58 years in a new way.

Twenty members of the Greening family, most from London, watched as the reef balls were unhooked from the floats and sank beneath the surface, dropping to the Gulf floor 35 feet below.

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Flowers sit in a fishing rod holder aboard the Flying Fish charter boat, alongside the Sea Fox charter, before the ceremony.

Members of all 18 families threw flowers in the water and hugged one another as the names of the deceased were called out over the ship's loudspeaker.

Then both ships' horns sounded three times in a somber memorial.

Until that moment, there had been a sense of joviality on board. People drank beer and told stories. Someone poured beer into the water, providing a last sip for the departed.

Another woman broke open a bag of fish food and poured it into the water, over the burial site.

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Flowers sit in a fishing rod holder aboard the Flying Fish charter boat, alongside the Sea Fox charter, before the reef balls containing the ashes of people who chose to be buried at sea were dropped into the Gulf.

More than 250 people from Virginia to Texas have been buried at sea during the past three years by Eternal Reefs, an Atlanta-based company.

The burials are also a way to help the environment by creating structures that benefit fish and other marine life.

The company incorporates cremated remains into a cement mixture used to cast artificial reef formations at a Sarasota plant.

The process, including the shipboard memorial ceremony, costs from $1,495 to $4,995, depending on the size of the reef ball and whether it is shared with others.

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COURTESY PHOTO

A reef ball with coral on it.

Keith Cooper's 43-year-old brother, Michael, was killed in a car accident in Atlanta last year and was among those being buried Monday.

"He told his wife if anything ever happened to him he thought this was the neatest thing that could be done with him," Cooper said. "This has brought some real closure to the process."

Eternal Reefs can be contacted at (888) 423-7333 or on the Web at http://www.eternalreefs.com/.

Last modified: March 30. 2004 12:00AM

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