A beautiful way to memorialize a loved one, these Eternal Reef reef balls are helping to rebuild ecosystems along miles and miles of the southeastern US shore.

credit: eternalreefs.com

The concept is both straightforward and beautifully innovative: the cremated remains of your friend, family member, or pet are mixed into their special concrete blend to create what they call a “pearl”, which you are invited to customize with handprints, shells, and any mementos that will not react with or harm the ocean environment. After it is set and cured, the pearl is concreted into the center of a reef ball, which is then placed in one of the organization’s artificial reef sites; they are located off the coasts of Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina,Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Texas.

The round, hollow, vented reef balls have proven themselves to be an ideal shape for encouraging fish, coral, invertebrates, and other organisms to take up residence, and they are extremely stable in the ocean environment, as 80% of the ball’s weight is in the lower 25% of the structure. Scientists first experimented with this shape 24 years ago, and they have been using a version of it ever since.

Eternal Reefs works alongside the Reef Ball Foundation, an international environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) with projects in over 70 countries; they have deployed over 700,000 reef balls to date. Both The Reef Ball Foundation and Reef Innovations , which works with the Reef Ball Foundation worldwide to establish new habitats for fish and other sea life, are strategic partners with Eternal Reefs.

The entire Reef Ball family of companies is “committed to preserving, protecting and enhancing the marine environment for future generations”.