After struggling for 20 years to find an environmentally friendly alternative to the concrete anchors used for navigational buoys, the U.S. Coast Guard may have an answer.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate offered a prize competition in January 2016, for which Cole Keaoulu Santos from Hawaii proposed a narrow screw anchor instead of a concrete sinker, and instead of a heavy metal chain he suggested an elastic rope to prevent scraping of the ocean floor.
In April, the Research and Development Center, or RDC, embarked on a two-year experiment to test several different types of mooring systems inspired by Santos’ concepts.
Read more at Coastal Review Online
