A Cornish harbour has started boat trials on a unique eco-mooring system designed to protect sensitive areas of seabed from the scouring caused by traditional mooring chains.

The Advanced Mooring System (AMS) in place of Flushing Beach has been designed by naval architect & engineering firm MOREK, working with Falmouth Harbour's marine operations team, with floats along the length of the mooring chain to lift it off the seabed.

Falmouth Harbour (FH) are now monitoring how a yacht attached to the AMS sits in the water - in all weathers and tides - to gauge how safe and practical the system is for wider use in a commercial and leisure harbour environment.

Environment Manager Vicki Spooner said: “We’ve put the trial AMS within one of the scour patches left by a traditional chain mooring – one of 11 removed by us in 2021 to allow the seagrass bed below to recover.

“Ongoing monitoring of the scour patches by the University of Exeter shows the seagrass is regenerating itself which is fantastic – and if the AMS functions as well as we hope with a yacht attached, we potentially foresee using them in environmentally sensitive areas, or on the fringes of these areas.”

MOREK – a Falmouth-based marine engineering and naval architecture consultancy - have been collaborating with the harbour for the AMS project. MOREK have taken skills they more regularly apply to design and construction of marine renewable to provide the technical rigour required to develop the design of the new moorings. They have used Orcaflex software to model the likely performance of AMS within Cornish Harbours for TEVI and Natural England.

Falmouth Harbour CEO Miles Carden says, “We’ve been working closely with our harbour users throughout the stages of this trial – and seeing a boat finally moored on the AMS is an exciting moment.

“We need to learn more about how our eco-mooring performs in our particular waters as the use of AMS over areas where seagrass and maerl are found could be a significant way to reduce physical impacts from mooring and anchoring on the seabed below.”

Over the next two months Falmouth Harbour will be monitoring the boat’s movement around a central point and also cleat forces to increase understanding of the AMS and whether they can reliably be used in the future as a way of minimising impacts on sensitive seabeds.

For further information on the work of Falmouth Harbour and ongoing progress updates on its AMS trial visit https://www.falmouthharbour.co.uk/environment/advanced-mooring-systems-ams/