After the ceremony, before the family disembarks, the captain issues a signed certificate bearing the exact GPS coordinates of the release point — the location where the ashes entered the water. This document is not required by federal or state law, but in the years since we began issuing it, it has become one of the documents families most value.
The certificate records the date and time of the ceremony, the name of the deceased, the GPS coordinates of the release point in both decimal degrees and degrees-minutes-seconds format, and the captain's signature. It is printed on quality paper and is ready at the close of the ceremony.
The certificate is not an official government document — it is the captain's attestation of a fact. As a legal matter, it carries the same evidentiary standing as any signed contemporaneous record by a professional. Some estate attorneys recommend keeping it with the death certificate and the will; others note that it may be relevant to estate filings if the deceased's wishes specified burial at sea and those wishes must be documented.
The range is wide. Some families frame the certificate alongside a photograph of the vessel and the date. Others file it with estate documents and rarely look at it again, finding comfort in simply knowing it exists. Some families use it to locate the coordinates on a nautical chart and mark the position — a physical map with the specific place marked. One family we know had the coordinates engraved on a headstone alongside other memorial information, giving those who could not travel to the water a way to locate the place.
The deepest function of the certificate is simply this: it transforms an abstraction into a location. The ocean is vast; a person's remains within it are indistinguishable from the water. But a certificate with coordinates makes the place knowable, revisitable in imagination or in fact. Families who return to the water — as many do — can return to a place, not just to the sea in general. That specificity turns out to matter enormously.