A Peculiar Cemetery

For those of you that have read my recent Cracked article The Most Mindblowing Things That Can Be Found Underwater, you'll be pleased to know that there is a little bit more where that came from. I present to you the entry that was cut from the final list, in all its glory (pictures courtesy of neptunesociety.com):

A Cemetery

The "official" reason for creating the Neptune Memorial Reef is to promote the local marine life, but here at Cracked, our first thought at the idea of building an underwater cemetery is: "Thank God someone is taking precautions to make sure our dead stay dead." And if those precautions include the ever so slight risk of creating zombie sharks-- well, scuba diving was never for us anyways.

The reef is the largest man-made reef in the world,  and the cemetery thing all started when questions about funding arose. Then someone had an idea: people paying to be buried there. And the rest is history. We hear it's to dive for.

The layout is remeniscent of a traditional cemetery, complete with benches so that you can take a load off when those fins get tired.

Just don't sit on uncle Ted.

There's a bunch of choices for after your cremated remains have been mixed into the cement: you can be cast as arches, columns, and other marine life statues.  According to Stephen Ziadie, the Chief Operating Officer, "The most popular are the marine placements. Everyone wants to be a shellfish or a starfish or a brain coral.”

That's right: any type of marine life. Also lions.

The Neptune Society website even has a video tour. A tour that is narrated by someone who is way too happy. It's creepy:

Apparently burial at sea is a hot commodity because it currently has enough space for 850 bodies, but the Neptune Society wants to expand to 125,000. The reef aspect of the project has also been a huge success. Marine life in the area has gone from almost zero to thousands in the span of two years! Thousands of confused fish, mind you.

"Do you smell humans?"