Our anchor: anchora zosterae
Click here to access our anchor in the merge cube
Click here to access the video presentation of our anchor
How did we achieve our ecological anchorage?
First we brainstormed with the whole group, then we made the first diagrams... and once the whole system was imagined (the information and energy chain), we modelled it on Tinkercad...
Presentation of the components :
Our anchor is composed of 2 parts: a bell-shaped waterproof part houses a gear motor to generate the movement, the electronic components and the batteries. These can be recharged on the boat using a USB cable connected to solar panels.
The other houses a piston system that will transmit the movement to a screw to lower the anchor by turning...
And all this will be controlled and powered by a system in the hull that we have also modelled using Tinkercad...
How our anchor works :
The sailor via a remote control will send an acoustic signal generated by a sonar which will be received by a piezoelectric sensor.
The electronic card will then start the reduction motor in one direction or the other in order to lower or raise the anchor when it is raised.
By sinking into the ground via a screw rather than clinging to the seagrass, this anchor will damage it less when it is raised!
Modelling our anchor
The information and energy chain of our anchor
The anchoring of boats leads to the destruction of sea grass beds and breaks in the coral beds. Each anchorage tears off an average of 20 meadow bundles.
The damage is divided into three phases: starting with dropping the anchor on the bottom, then the anchoring time, and finally the lifting. Recreational boats, fishing boats and commercial boats (beach boats) have a significant impact on fragile habitats such as maerl beds, Posidonia meadows, Cymodocea grass beds and littoral rocks with Posidonia.
The data collected, including GPS coordinates and depth, were used to prove the results.
The region of Monastir has a recreational boat fleet of 3702 units in 2007, of which 900 visited the Kuriat Islands, and the commercial boats are concentrated around the small island on the bottoms with Posidonia and Cymodocea as well as the Cymodocea grasslands.
This activity generates an increasing anthropic pressure on this archipelago, which results in a continuous degradation of the ecosystems as well as a disturbance of the species, leading to negative effects on biodiversity.
Satellite images have shown that the main habitats affected are the Posidonia barrier reef and
Posidonia barrier reef and the Cymodocea grasslands.
Habitats affected by boat mooring
Types of anchors such as the ring fixed in the rock, the concrete sledge for soft bottoms, or other specific types of anchors such as "Harmony" are proposed, as well as the installation of structures such as the dead body or floating pontoon. It is emphasized that in order to choose the most suitable solution, it is necessary to take into consideration the nature of the marine environment. Different types of ecological moorings used around the world are presented, such as sand screws, anchor bolts, spring anchors and deadbeds, each type being adapted to a specific marine environment
We were inspired by these inventions to imagine an anchor that does not destroy the seagrass.
Harmony type device (Neptune Environnement, 2000).
Spring anchor (Francour et al., 2006)