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'Reef Balls' Enable Loved Ones' Remains to Sleep With the Fishes Associated Press Sep 25, 2004 OCEAN CITY, N.J. (AP) - As if shooting a loved one's ashes into space or pressing them into artificial diamonds were not sufficiently offbeat, relatives of the deceased now can have their ashes mixed into concrete to help form ocean habitats. A Georgia company has placed about 200 of the concrete cones, called "reef balls," in the ocean, mostly along the Gulf Coast. Last week, it interred cones filled with the ashes of several people about seven miles off the shore as part of...

One drove from Missouri, one works here; both say sinking is a fitting end. Want to see it? Call 884-4000 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for information. Jim Wicker drove more than 1,020 miles from his home in Missouri to come to Corpus Christi and see the aircraft carrier that took him on three tours of duty in Vietnam from 1970 to 1973. During summer nights, Wicker said, he would crawl off the bow of the USS Oriskany's flight deck and nestle into a net to sleep in the cool breeze. "It would just get hotter and hotter in...

Mississippi is one of five states that has proposed a site in a competition to become the watery grave for an aircraft carrier. The 888-foot USS Oriskany is a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars. It will be the largest vessel deliberately sunk as an artificial reef in the United States, probably in August or September 2004. The Oriskany will be the first to go down in a new Navy program to get rid of obsolete warships by sinking them as a cheaper alternative to the scrap yard. Mississippi is competing with Florida and Texas for the site, along...

Sydney - Australia's Great Barrier Reef - the world's largest chain of living coral - could be devastated by global warming in the next 50 years unless drastic action was taken, a report said on Monday. The Australian Institute of Marine Science and other agencies warned that without tough restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, sea temperatures could rise to a level that would bleach and kill vast tracts of coral. "The appearance of coral reefs and thus their amenity for tourism may be seriously compromised, and their productivity and biodiversity decimated," the report said. Coral bleaching - when colourful reefs...