In an eco-friendly measure, increasing numbers of people are choosing to be buried at sea. Traditionally a send-off for former sailors and naval personnel, it has been adopted by people who believe it to be a greener burial option.

Their bodies are wrapped in cotton sheets and placed inside plywood coffins which have concrete attached. Grieving relatives and friends are then taken on a boat to one of the two locations off the British coast where the burials are allowed.

John Lister, a director of the Britannia Shipping Company, based near Sidmouth, Devon, which has collected deposits from 150 people who have left instructions for a sea burial, said that everything would degrade. “Burials at sea are a 100 per cent green option,” he added.

“The body must not be embalmed and is wrapped in a biodegradable cotton sheet. The coffin is made of marine plywood and nothing will be left of it after 36 to 40 months. There is no harm to the marine environment and the concrete which weights the coffin is broken down by salt water. Some people have the impression that we are somehow building an island of coffins but that is not the case. Each one breaks down.”

The cost is just over £4,000, almost double the price charged by undertakers for a coffin and cremation.

Mr Lister said that his company charters a boat on the Isle of Wight, from where family and friends are taken to a designated burial point where the coffin is lowered into the sea from a mechanical ramp.

“It's all over in the blink of an eye,” he said. “We then toast the deceased with his or her favourite tipple.”

The only two places in the country where sea burials are allowed are off the coast of the Isle of Wight and Newhaven in East Sussex. These are known as spoil sites where no dredging, fishing, trawling or diving is allowed and the Marine and Fisheries Agency has to issue licences for every burial. The average number of sea burials a year is 14 but within the next three to five years Mr Lister believes that the number could double.

There would be public pressure for more burial points, he said, because of the extra costs involved bodies being transported to the south of England. His company has recently organised burials for individuals from Scotland, Liverpool and Wales.

“We are now seeing more hobby sailors and people who have moved to the coast and love the sea. It has captured the imagination and has a certain romance about it,” he said. “People think it is a pleasant ending.”

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We have no plans to add to existing sites.

“Sites have to be selected carefully, assessing risks from currents and tides or fishing boats to avoid situations that cause distress to relatives and friends of the deceased.”

CASE STUDY: 'I was at sea and it's a fitting end'

Alastair Monteith, 72, has decided that he wants to be buried at sea. He wants to join his late wife, Barbara, off the Isle of Wight, near the Needles.

The pair met when working on a cargo ship and he spent 35 years in the Merchant Navy. At first he was not convinced that he would follow the maritime tradition of burial at sea. However, the moving ceremony for his wife, who died three years ago after a long illness, changed his mind.

Mr Monteith, who lives in Yelverton, on Dartmoor, Devon, said: “I have been at sea most of my life and decided it was a fitting end.” Mr Monteith has planned his own burial. He said: “You go out to sea on a launch and the coffin is draped with the Union flag. Then there is a 15-minute service. I want it exactly as my wife had - a recording of Elgar's Nimrod and a reading of Tennyson's poem Crossing the Bar.

“After the coffin went into the sea I celebrated my wife's life, rather than mourned her death, with a champagne cocktail. It was the drink we always had to mark our anniversaries and birthdays.”

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