Memorial pet reef dedicated off of Sarasota believed to be first in the world

SARASOTA – Cindy TenHagen and her son Dylan, 9, drove more than four hours from Jacksonville recently so they could say farewell to Bella, a beloved Chow-Hound mix who loved fireworks.

Cindy’s husband, Richard TenHagen, would have been there, too, had he not been overseas, serving in the Navy.

The TenHagens were the first customers who signed up to have a pet’s ashes incorporated into a reef ball and placed offshore as part of what Memorial Reef International said is the first memorial reef for pets, at the M2 artificial reef site off of Sarasota's New Pass in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We chose this because this brings more life and she can live on this way and be part of an ocean reef, and I think that’s beautiful,” TenHagen said at a dedication ceremony hosted Jan. 17 at Reef Innovations on Central Avenue in Sarasota.

She loved the fact that someday Dylan could return to visit Bella and either fish the reef or perhaps scuba dive and view the memorial, under about 40 feet of water.

“I feel it’s an honor to have this whole experience,” TenHagen said. She learned about the Pet Reefs from Paw Prints Crematory, which works in partnership with Gateway Services, a national company that offers cremation and memorial services for pets, as well as grief support for their owners.

The memorial reef ball for Bella was one of 25 deployed at the M2 reef site last Wednesday morning as part of a day of remembrance and celebration of the departed pets.

Todd Barber, chairman of the Reef Ball Foundation, said that by the time loved ones – both people and pets – are placed in an undersea memorial garden, the grieving process has usually passed.

Earlier:First artificial reefs to honor submariners placed offshore from Sarasota

“This is usually when people are ready to celebrate,” said Barber, who deployed a reef ball for Timmy, his departed teacup poodle, on Wednesday.

“You don’t have to do it at time of death,” Barber continued, admitting that Timmy’s funeral was a sad affair. “You can do it after you’ve had time to grieve and you’re ready to celebrate life – whether it be a person or a pet.

“Now  this is the time to say, ‘Remember the cool pictures we had of him and when he used to travel with us.’”

An underwater inspiration

Steven Berkoff was diving at the Church Reef in the Philippines and marveled at what he saw – a scale model of a church, complete with a graveyard.

“I thought it would be really cool to be buried under the water and not just spread all over it,” Berkoff said.

Related:After death, a reef life

That trip became the inspiration for the founding of Memorial Reefs International, a company that has created “Undersea Memorial Gardens” all over the world.

The process, including a celebration of life gathering, was explored in the 2020 HBO documentary “Alternate Endings: Six New Ways To Die in America.”

Sarasota-based Reef Innovations is the contractor that provides the reef balls, using a concrete mix made for shoreline stabilization and underwater construction.

The 31-year-old company has a presence in more than 78 countries and deployed more than 1 million reef balls worldwide.

In addition to manufacturing reef balls, Reef Innovations makes fiberglass molds to reproduce those balls so they can be replicated by 3,000 contractors around the world.

“This is kind of like reef ball central,” said Barber, who established the volunteer Reef Ball Development Group in 1993.

About 90% of the reef balls do not incorporate cremains. All of them have sections where coral clippings can be attached, to help foster coral growth on the artificial reefs.

The reef balls deployed by the Reef Ball Foundation typically used available coral clippings; the concrete plug technology was shared with Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, which uses the same techniques to plant coral to reinvigorate the Florida Reef Tract and elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Related:Mote Marine scientists observe lab-grown coral spawning in the wild

For a memorial ball, a portion of the sand used to create the concrete is replaced with ashes.

“You still have to have the rock and cement mix for strength and we have to Ph balance it to make it right for the ocean,” Barber said.

The company is also working on a process to use calcium carbonate in place of sand, to sequester CO2 from the environment.

A novel tribute

Berkoff, who lives in Oahu, Hawaii, was hit by a car in a parking lot on the big island of Hawaii eight years ago, and Redford – a Chihuahua-Dachsund mix, referred to as a Chiweenie – became his primary therapy dog.

When Redford died in 2020, Berkoff, 68, thought about having Redford’s ashes mixed with his in a memorial ball.

Boehm, Berkoff’s wife said, “We thought we should honor our pet now and see how all the life grows on the memorial while we are still alive.”

That thought spurred the creation of the Pet Reef concept.

For $40, a pet’s cremains are combined with those of as many as 200 other pets in a reef ball. The pet owner also receives a keepsake certificate and a photo of the memorial pet reef garden.

For $595, the remains are incorporated along with nine other pets. The names of “the pack” are listed on a bronze plaque attached to the memorial. In addition to the certificate and photo, the pet owner also receives the GPS coordinates for the Pack Reef.

For $2,995, the pet can get an individual memorial reef ball and the owner has the option to help design the memorial reef plaque.

“We’re trying to make it available to as many people as we can,” Berkoff said.

Gateway, the largest pet crematorium in the U.S., offers the Pet Reef as an option to pet owners they serve.

While this deployment to the pet memorial reef included 25 reef balls, Berkoff said one planned for June could include as many as 50.

“It’s the start of the first one of its kind,” Berkoff said. “It’s very, very exciting.”

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: First known pet memorial reef established in Gulf off of Sarasota