The Most Famous Cemeteries In America

Neptune Memorial Reef is an artificial reef, nature preserve, and "eco-friendly resting place" located about three miles off the coast of Miami. According to the Neptune Memorial Reef website, families can have their loved ones' ashes blended into a cement memorial, which is marked with a copper plaque and added to the artificial reef. The

Neptune Memorial Reef is an artificial reef, nature preserve, and "eco-friendly resting place" located about three miles off the coast of Miami. According to the Neptune Memorial Reef website, families can have their loved ones' ashes blended into a cement memorial, which is marked with a copper plaque and added to the artificial reef. The memorials can be crafted to look like sea creatures — options include a 24" manatee, a sea turtle, and a stingray, with prices starting at just under $16K. Over time, the memorial becomes a coral habitat, attracting sea sponges, sea urchins, crabs, and 56 different species of fish (via Neptune Memorial Reef). Also, the setting looks like Atlantis, complete with sunken pillars and stone lions.

You might think an oceanic final resting place would be peaceful, but Neptune Memorial Reef is also a tourist attraction. It's popular with scuba divers, and it's also a destination for marine biologists and students, so there are usually a lot of flippered people swimming around and boats motoring back and forth overhead. Still, if you love the ocean and don't mind sleeping with the fishes, it's a beautiful setting, an eco-friendly burial option, and only marginally more expensive than a typical cemetery burial (per everplans).

Neptune Memorial Reef is a work in progress: It's currently just one acre, but by the time it's finished, it's expected to cover around 16 acres of ocean floor, and contain more than 250,000 memorials (via Neptune Memorial Reef).

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