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The mooring system for a fish farm consists anchor, anchor chains, ropes and buoys, in addition, several mooring components like shackles, connection plates, chain connection links. These elements need to be assembled together, correctly specified and installed, physically and operationally compatible with each other, and effective in use and maintenance.
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Aquaculture Mooring System
For the Fish Farm, the function of the mooring system is to keep the farm in a fixed position and to avoid transfer of excessive forces to the cages, especially vertical forces. Different methods are used for mooring depending on the type of cage, how exposed the sites are to the weather, and the requirement for position exactness.
The most common mooring strategy is to use a submerged grid system, with anchor lines arranged in a catenary shape to secure a group of net pens on a site. The components of the anchor line, chain, rope and buoy, are specified in an effort to optimize the stiffness and elasticity characteristics required for the site conditions.
The main components for a mooring system:
1. Anchors:
Stingray anchor and plough anchor are the most popular type of anchoring device available. Stingray anchor is a kind of dragging anchor, designed to penetrate the seabed, either in whole or in part, particularly suited to resist large horizontal loads, but not for large vertical loads. Plough anchor is particularly suitable for bottoms of sand or mud, which is also named sandy anchor or muddy anchor.
2. Ground Anchor Chain:
The ground chain, connecting the anchor and the mooring rope is primarily used to provide weight to the mooring line, in order to keep the angle between seafloor and the mooring line within the desired range, between 9° and 12°.
3. Mooring Buoy:
For the fish farm mooring buoys, the outer material is often rotational molded polyethylene, and the filling is usually polyurethane foam or polystyrene foam, a steel bar(about 30–40 mm thickness) runs through the main buoy body to connect the two opposite attachment rings and add strength. The buoyancy in kilograms of a buoy is equivalent to the volume of the buoy minus its weight in kilograms.
4. Connection Shackles:
Shackles are used to connect mooring ropes, chains and anchors. The SWL is usually used to identify the size of shackles. Shackles can be D Type and Omega Type. Omega shaped shackles are the most common used, because they can accommodate a greater number of connections.
5. Connection Plate:
Mooring plates are the main connecting points of the whole grid structure where all components come together and are locked with shackles: the grid system, the mooring lines, the buoy chains and the cage bridles. Plates are usually round shaped, with sufficient holes for the shackle pins to be inserted.
6. Mooring Rope and Thimbles:
Ropes are the main components of the mooring system, and are used for both the mooring lines and grid system lines. Thimbles are generally made of hot-dip galvanized steel, and are used to reinforce the rope loop (eye splice) where it is connected to metal equipment (shackles, rings, etc.), and thus where it is subjected to heavy abrasion. Thimbles can markedly reduce wear on the rope. Thimbles used for moorings are usually tube type and open type.
The parameters which effects type of mooring:
Material and Design of Fish Farm Cages
Fish farming environmental conditions(Like water currents, waves, winds, depth of site, bottom type and etc.)
Size and number of aquaculture cage
Because we design, build, own and maintain a comprehensive inventory of mooring components, our team of anchoring and mooring specialists can help you get the equipment that best suits your project's needs.
Our company can provide consulting, design, manufacuturing and installation services for the whole industrial chain of marine aquaculture equipment and other marine mooring projects. Welcome to contact us if you need to design and provide any marine cylone mooring, aquaculture cage mooring system. Thank you.
