How a video game character ended up on the sand
In January 2015 Riot Games ran Ocean Week on the Oceanic server of League of Legends. Players earned points by winning matches with sea-themed champions, and the community was promised that if it reached 275,000 points the company would build a real artificial reef in the shape of one of those characters. The total was beaten, a vote chose Nautilus, the game's armoured deep-sea diver with an anchor for a weapon, and 42,006 players who scored three or more points had their gamer tags engraved on a plaque to go down with him.
The statue was fabricated by Reef Design Lab, the Melbourne studio that builds marine habitat structures, and placed in early 2016 with the help of the Underwater Research Group of Queensland (URGQ), the club that has built and looked after Curtin Artificial Reef since 1968. Riot released a video of the descent in April 2016. It is the only addition to Curtin since the last vessel went down in 1998.
What you will find
Nautilus sits upright on a plinth on the sand, facing across the reef, with his anchor and chain laid out beside him. Under the anchor is a reef ball, a hollow perforated concrete dome of the kind used at Moreton Bay's other artificial reefs, which gives small fish somewhere to hide. The name plaque is mounted with the statue.
Like everything else at Curtin the site is on moving sand. URGQ divers who have watched it since 2016 report that the sand periodically buries part of the statue and most of the reef ball, then clears again, and that the whole thing is now well coated in growth. Expect it to look different on every visit.
Diving it
This is a stop on a Curtin dive rather than a dive in its own right. Descend at the southern end of the reef, find the Rock Driller, and head east a short distance across the sand. Because it is off the main line of wrecks it is easy to miss in poor visibility, so take a compass bearing from the wreck before you leave it.
Everything that applies to Curtin Artificial Reef applies here:
- Slack high water, thirty minutes either side; strong current at every other stage of the tide
- Visibility drops after rain; best after a week of southerlies
- Discarded fishing tackle across the site, so carry a knife and wear gloves
- Fishing-boat traffic overhead: fly the dive flag and carry an SMB
- Inside the Moreton Bay Marine Park; the site is buoyed