‘Eternal reefs’ are aquatic memorials to the dead

Theresa Shaner loved the ocean. Whether she surfed, snorkeled, scuba dived or studied fish populations, she seemed at home at sea.

So when it came to memorialize the late Riviera Beach physician assistant, her family wanted to do something different and unique for Shaner.

To do so, they helped create an underwater memorial because the 65-year-old “saw God in the fish,” according to her niece Gina Conn, of Tallahassee.

Shaner is one of seven people memorialized with the release in the ocean off South Florida of concrete reef balls containing their ashes.

In the culmination of a series of events that began Friday, the placement happened Monday, about two miles offshore of the Haulover Park Marina, 10800 Collins Ave. in north Miami-Dade.

About 50 family members and friends of the deceased gathered to send off the hollowed-out balls that were being placed on the ocean floor to create an aquatic memorial by the organization Eternal Reefs, the Sarasota nonprofit that creates the underwater “living legacies.”

The group started as a reef-saving project with its first placement in 1992 near Fort Lauderdale before expanding to the memorial with ashes several years later. The process creates a permanent living memorial and also creates an underwater natural reef.

Eternal Reef personnel take a person’s ashes and mix them into environmentally friendly balls that look like boulders with holes punched throughout to help create the reef.