Government officials in Alabama are giving an old riverboat casino a from Indiana a new life — not floating down the state’s copious waterways, but at the bottom of the sea.
Alabama-based news channel WPMI detailed the unusual plan to scuttle the riverboat, called the Argosy VI, off the coast of Orange Beach, a small city roughly an hour south east of Mobile. According to the outlet, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources purchased the Argosy VI with plans to turn it into an artificial reef.
Earlier this week, teams of workers gutted the interior of the vessel, clearing slot machines and other gambling fixtures to make room for future residents: mussels, barnacles, sponges, and corals.
“You’ll start seeing fish on it within a few weeks, but for it to become a highly productive reef structure its going to take a couple years before all the tuna kits, the bryozoa, the corals before they start really settling on it and providing the base of the food web that’s going to feed the larger predatory fishes,” Craig Newton, supervisor of the Alabama Marine Resources Fisheries Section told WPMI.
