FR2905823A1 - Oyster farming bag hooking device for e.g. metallic side-rail in beach, has intermediate segment extended between side-rail and lower segment that forms transport element of handle received and maintained in space delimited by segments - Google Patents

Abstract

The device has a hooking element comprising intermediate and lower segments (21, 22) welded with respect to each other to delimit a space (3) for receiving and maintaining a pivoting handle of an oyster farming bag. The intermediate segment is extended between a side-rail (14) and the lower segment, and the lower segment forms a transport element of the handle. An upper segment (23) is extended along the side-rail while resting on the side-rail. An independent claim is also included for an oyster farming bag hooking assembly comprising a hooking device and a tubular support.

Description

1 Device for attaching shellfish pouches to a support,

  and corresponding fastening assembly. The invention relates to the field of designing and producing devices and installations for use in the field of shellfish culture. In particular, but not exclusively, the invention relates to the field of oyster farming. The essential step in shellfish farming is to grow shellfish on adapted structures until they have reached a size that allows them to be consumed.

  Thus, for certain shellfish such as oysters, shellfish culture is practiced by means of cages or bags intended to be secured to supports provided at sea, and as regards oyster farming, on the foreshore or at sea. The structure of these cages or pockets allows the shells to capture marine nutrients, mainly plankton, for their growth. The fixing of cages or pockets of shellfish culture to supports is obviously necessary to prevent that these, and their contents, are carried along with the tides or currents. In the state of the art, various types of cages / pockets of shellfish culture and different ways of joining them to supports are known. According to a basic technique, the cages in question are made of a mesh material delimiting a volume intended to accommodate a large number of shells. These cages are in the form of bags and are made either with a wire mesh or with a plastic mesh. These pockets are closed by cords or equivalent means. Depending on the shellfish farming areas, such basic structure cages can be secured in different ways to equally different support structures.

Thus, in some countries and in particular in France, these shellfish cages are generally placed on table structures made of substantially tubular material, said structures having uprights forming feet and sleepers on which the cages are placed. The cages are secured to these structures forming tables through links that are generally formed by pieces of air chamber. In other countries, for example in Australia, these cages are suspended by rigid hooks to essentially tubular elements forming wire, themselves secured to poles. Such systems, consisting of basic shellfish culture cages and wire supports, are shown in European Patent Application EP-1 26 567 published on December 18, 2002, especially with reference to Figures 1 to 3 thereof. The first of these techniques, according to which shellfish cages rely on essentially tubular table structures to which they are attached, has certain disadvantages. In the first place, this technique involves the need to frequently manipulate the cages in order to prevent the shells from seeing their shells weld together during their growth, or to sort them, or to remove them to sell them.

Secondly, the links used to secure the cages to the tubular structures forming tables can break, especially during adverse weather conditions. Finally, it should also be noted that the shellfish cages are in the form of bags and being arranged substantially horizontally on the table support structures, the area occupied by these bags is relatively large. The second technique, in which the shellfish cages are suspended from essentially tubular structures forming wires, so as to hang under them, allows a more regular mixing of the shells contained in the cages by the tides and the currents and allows to manipulate the cages less often. However, the simple plastic hooks used for the suspension of these cages to the wire structures do not always ensure effective hooking cages which, under certain circumstances, may be made to separate from the structures that support them. It has therefore been proposed in the state of the art improved suspended cages provided with hooking means specially designed to cooperate with the tubular support elements forming wire.

This type of cage is described in particular in the European patent application EP-1 266 567 cited above with particular reference to Figures 4 to 7 thereof. According to this technique, the cages are provided with hooking devices on wire supports including rigid snap-fastening means thereon. Such snapping, although reversible, reduces the risk of separation of the cages and their support at the mercy of marine currents or tides. These latching means are however designed to adapt to a given diameter of tubular support wire. A disadvantage of this type of fastening device lies in the fact that they are generally unsuitable for hanging suspended cages they equip the tubular structures forming tables. Indeed, these tubular table structures consist of tubular sections with sections that do not correspond to the section for which the snap fasteners were designed.

This problem is compounded by the fact that the table structures have substantially tubular support sections which may vary regionally. It is therefore not economically feasible to design attachment devices with latching means for each of these sections.

There is therefore a need for a device for attaching shellfish cages suspended to substantially tubular support structures forming tables. Indeed, for obvious economic reasons, the shellfish farmers 5 until now implementing shellfish cages attached to such structures forming tables, and now wishing to suspend their cages, do not wish to completely change their facilities to replace these structures However, they wish to retain these table structures as far as possible. There is also known another technique for attaching a shellfish farming cage to a substantially tubular support according to which the attachment device comprises a flexible link, means for hooking the flexible link to the substantially tubular support provided at a first end. flexible link, means for securing the flexible link to a shellfish culture cage provided at a second end of the flexible link, the attachment means including a first hook provided in a first plane and a second hook provided in a second separate plane in the foreground and substantially parallel thereto, the hooks being substantially opposed to each other. This technique is in practice relatively tedious to implement. Indeed, according to this technique, it is necessary to place the hooks and the flexible means (constituted by elastics) at the same time, which involves complex manipulations. Conventionally, all the manipulations necessary for the suspension of a pocket causes laying times, per pocket, between 15 and 25 seconds. In addition, to perform these manipulations, the person is made to work the curved back, which quickly generates a great difficulty.

The object of the invention is in particular to overcome the drawbacks of the prior art. More specifically, the object of the invention is to propose a technique for attaching shellfish culture pouches to essentially tubular supports which makes it possible to simplify the laying operations and to make them faster to perform. It will be noted that in the present description the term "substantially tubular supports" is used to mean rigid or non-rigid supports having a longitudinal shape but which may have any type of section (round, oval, square, twisted, triangular, etc.). . Such tubular supports may therefore in particular be constituted by flexible elements such as, for example, wires or cables or by rigid elements such as for example metal or non-metallic spars, or metal sleepers. The invention also aim of providing such a technique which is very economical to implement. Another object of the invention is to provide such a technique which makes it possible to reduce the difficulty of the laying operations, compared to the solutions of the prior art. Another object of the invention is to provide such a technique which is capable of accommodating a very wide range of carrier sections. These objectives, as well as others which will appear later, are achieved thanks to the invention which relates to a device for attaching a shellfish culture bag to a substantially tubular support characterized in that it comprises at least one hooking element comprising at least two bent segments relative to each other intended to delimit, in the vicinity of said support, a space for receiving and holding an element of said pocket, such as an element forming a handle, one of said segments, said intermediate segment, being provided to extend between said support and the other of said segments, said lower segment, said lower segment forming a carrying member of said pocket.

In this way, a fastening device that is particularly simple in design and inexpensive to manufacture is obtained. Moreover, it allows the pockets to be hooked up simply and quickly, the operator simply having to place the pocket handles in the reception areas delimited by the segments, then, as will be explained in more detail by following, to ensure the maintenance of all on the support and / or pocket on the device. These operations can be performed by simple successive gestures, this under relatively comfortable conditions for the operator. Indeed, it can easily install the pockets with the back straight, which makes the task less painful than with previous solutions (which require to bend to perform various manipulations with a certain accuracy).

In addition, the laying of a pocket with an attachment device takes place in a significantly reduced time compared to the prior art, 7 to 8 seconds being only necessary to suspend a pocket on a device. hanging according to the invention. It is noted that the hooking device according to the present invention is intended to cooperate with a shellfish cage suspended by means of this device to a substantially tubular support, whether it is a wire support or is integrated in means forming table. We also note that an originality of the attachment device according to the invention lies in the fact that the hooking elements do not cooperate by snapping with the or substantially tubular supports or with which they are intended to cooperate. Thus, they can adapt to different sizes and shapes of sections of such substantially tubular supports. Unlike snap-fasteners of the prior art, they therefore have the advantage that they are no longer devolved to a shape and a given section size of substantially tubular support. Thus, they can cooperate easily with essentially tubular table supports such as those currently used conventionally in shellfish farming techniques using shellfish cage bags placed on such supports.

Of course, these hooking devices can also be used to hook shellfish cages to essentially tubular yarn-forming supports such as those shown, for example, in FIGS. 1 to 3 of the aforementioned European patent application. According to a preferred solution, the attachment device comprises a third segment, said upper segment, from which said intermediate segment extends, said upper segment being intended to extend along said support bearing on it. However, as will become clearer later, it is also conceivable to secure the fastening element to said support 15 directly via the intermediate segment, this in the possible absence of the upper segment. According to an advantageous solution, said intermediate segment and said lower segment form between them an angle less than 90. The hooking device, once in place on the support, has in this way a lower segment which rises towards the support, which contributes to improving the maintenance of the pocket on the device, this against the forces applied. by sea currents or tides. Preferably, said lower segment has a stop or notch for receiving a retaining member for retaining said element in said reception space. In this way, the retaining member is held in position, conventionally consisting of a flexible elastic link that can slide along the lower segment, particularly if the lower segment is inclined relative to the support.

Advantageously, said upper segment has at least a first receiving notch of a securing member for retaining said hooking element on said support. This ensures the holding in position of the fastening member, also 5 conventionally constituted by a clamping collar. According to a variant, said upper segment has at least a second receiving notch of said retaining member for retaining said element in said reception space. Said fastening element according to the invention will advantageously be made of a rigid plastic material chosen so as to withstand the corrosive power of seawater. It will thus be possible to produce the fastening element in large series, by conventional techniques. , so inexpensive. The invention also relates to a hooking assembly of shellfish culture pouches comprising at least one substantially tubular support and at least one device for hooking the bags as described above. According to a first embodiment, said intermediate segment of said one or more attachment elements is welded to said support. According to a second embodiment, said one or more attachment elements comprise an upper segment secured to said support by at least one fastening member, removable or not. Other features and advantages of the invention will appear more clearly on reading the following description of two preferred embodiments of the invention, given by way of illustrative and non-limiting examples, and the appended drawings in which: Figure 1 is a top perspective view of tubular support means forming oyster table of the state of the art; - Figure 2 is a view of an attachment assembly of an oyster bag according to a first embodiment of the invention; Figure 3 is a view from the right side of the assembly shown in Figure 2; FIG. 4 is a perspective view of a shellfish culture bag attached to a support element of a table according to FIG. 1, thanks to two devices according to the invention. - Figure 5 is a schematic representation of a second embodiment of a hooking assembly of a shellfish culture bag. As indicated above, the principle of the invention lies in the fact of designing a fastening element in the form of a part comprising at least two segments bent between them delimiting a reception area of a pocket handle shellfish farming. With reference to FIG. 1, an oyster farming table of the type conventionally used on French coasts is represented in a superior view in perspective. This table 11 is constituted by a structure of mechanically welded metal wires. More precisely, this table has three supports forming a foot 12 and passing through 13, and three supports forming longitudinal members 14 provided essentially perpendicularly to said crosspieces 13. According to the state of the art, these oyster culture tables are used to receive cages which are linked by links generally consisting of pieces of inner tube.

More and more oyster farmers now wish to resort to the hanging cage technique. In practice, this technique is no longer to place the oyster cages on supports such as that shown in Figure 1, but to hang through the shackles these cages to the tubular elements son.

In this context, the invention authorizes the use of the suspended cage technique in cooperation with a substantially tubular support forming part of table means such as those shown in FIG. 1. According to the embodiment illustrated in FIGS. 2 to 4, as well as according to the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 5, a shellfish culture bag 25 provided with two pivoting handles 251 is attached to a spar 14 (or to a cross-piece 13) of an oyster culture table by means of two fastening elements 2 each comprising: a lower segment 22 forming a carrying member of a handle 251 of the pocket; an intermediate segment 21 extending between the spar 14 and the lower segment 22. Preferably, the fastening elements 2 are monobloc parts made of plastic.

According to the first embodiment, represented in FIGS. 2 to 4, the fastening elements furthermore comprise an upper segment 23 so that the fastening elements have a general shape in C. As it appears, in the FIGS. two embodiments, the segments of the attachment elements delimit each reception space 3 in which a handle 251 is intended to be introduced, placed on the lower segment and maintained on it as will be explained more in detail later. As mentioned above, such fastening elements are intended to be associated with a non-latching support. According to the first embodiment of the invention shown in FIGS. 2 to 4, the fastening element essentially comprises: a lower segment 22 extending from the lower end of the intermediate segment 21 forming an elbow with the latter, an upper segment 23 extending from the upper end of the intermediate segment 21 also forming a bend therewith. The end portion of the fastening element is therefore defined, opposite the intermediate segment 21, by the free ends of the segments 22, 23, the latter corresponding to the opening of the reception area of the the handle. Preferably, the bend formed by the segments 21 and 22 forms an angle less than 90 so that the segment 22, once the attachment element mounted on the support 13, 14, extends from the intermediate segment 10 21 In addition, the lower segment 22 has a stop 221 and the upper segment 23 has a notch 241 for receiving portions of a retaining member 4 (in practice a flexible link). elastic) surrounding and clamping together the hooking element and the support 13, 14.

It will be understood that once a retaining member 4 is attached to at least one of the attachment devices 2, as shown in FIG. 4, this stop 221 and this notch 241 prevent the removal of this member, and the cage is secured securely to the support. In practice, a single retaining member is sufficient for this purpose.

According to the embodiment shown in Figures 2 to 4, the attachment devices are held on the support 14 removably. The upper segments 23 thereof have a longitudinal chute 252 adapted to cooperate, at least roughly with the circular profile of the elements 14 of the table. In practice, the radius of curvature of the chute is provided so as to allow the attachment elements 2 to be fitted to most of the crosspieces or rails of oyster culture tables, or tubular wire elements.

For this, a securing member 5 (in practice a clamp) is attached to the hooking device so as to surround and clamp together the upper segment 23 and the support 13, 14. To ensure the maintenance of the securing member 5 along the segment 23, the latter has a notch 231 for receiving a portion of the securing member. This notch 231 is open in a direction such that the notch is opposite to the support 13, 14. It will be noted that fastening elements 2 of the type of those represented in the embodiment according to FIGS. 2 to 4 may, in other embodiments, be mounted permanently on supports for example by welding their upper segment thereon. In this case, these elements will be made of metal. Figure 4 illustrates a second embodiment of the invention.

According to this embodiment, the fastening elements 2 comprise only two segments: a lower segment 22 forming a carrying member of a handle 251 of the pocket 25; an intermediate segment 21 extending between the cross member 13 or the spar and the lower segment 22 and welded to the cross member 13 or the spar. Similarly to the first embodiment, the lower segment 22 extends from the lower end of the intermediate segment 21 forming a bend therewith (preferably at an angle less than 90). In this case, the reception space is delimited on the one hand by the segments 21, 22 and on the other hand by the support 13, 14. The end portion of the fastening element is therefore defined at opposite of the intermediate segment 21, by the free end of the segment 22, 30ecieci corresponding to the opening of the reception space of the handle.

The fastening elements 2 according to the present embodiment are fixed by welding the free end of the intermediate segment 21 to the support 13, 14. With a suspension assembly of shellfish pockets equipped with 5 according to one or other of the embodiments just described, the suspension is carried out very simply and very rapidly (in 7-8 seconds), according to essentially three steps: the operator takes the pocket ; the operator hooks the handles of the pocket to the fastening elements present on the table or the wire; the operator locks the pocket in position, this bringing back at least one retaining member (a single handle of a pocket that can be locked). Note that such a device is preferably oriented so that the marine currents act in the direction illustrated by the arrow F in Figure 2 relative to the support. In addition, the fastening elements 2 advantageously extend in a vertical plane passing through the support (it is further noted that they have no protruding portion above the supports) and propose a suspension configuration of the pockets such as that a sway of the pockets can. 25

Claims (10)

  1. Device for attaching a shellfish culture bag (25) to a substantially tubular support (13), (14), characterized in that it comprises at least one attachment element (2) comprising at least two segments angled relative to each other for delimiting in the vicinity of said support (13), (14) a space (3) for receiving and holding an element of said pocket, such as an element ( 251), one of said segments, said intermediate segment (21) being provided to extend between said support (13), (14) and the other of said segments, said lower segment (22), said segment lower (22) forming carrying member of said pocket.   2. Fastening device according to claim 1, characterized in that it comprises a third segment, said upper segment (23), from which extends said intermediate segment (21), said upper segment (23) being intended to extend along said support (13), (14) bearing thereon.   3. Fastening device according to one of claims 1 and 2, characterized in that said intermediate segment (21) and said lower segment (22) form between them an angle less than 90.   4. Fastening device according to any one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in that said lower segment (22) has a stop (221) or a receiving notch of a retaining member (4) for retain said element (251) in said reception space (3).   5. Fastening device according to any one of claims 2 to 4, characterized in that said upper segment (23) has at least a first notch (231) for receiving a securing member (5) for retaining said hooking element (2) on said support (13), (14).   6. Fastening device according to any one of claims 2 to 5 characterized in that said upper segment (23) has at least a second notch (241) for receiving a retaining member (4) for retaining said element (251) in said reception area (3).   7. Fastening device according to any one of claims 2 to 6, characterized in that said upper segment (23) has a chute (232) longitudinal intended to marry at least partially said support (13), (14). 5   Shellfish shell attachment assembly comprising at least one essentially tubular support (13), (14) and at least one attachment device (2) according to any one of claims 1 to 7.   9. Fastening assembly according to claim 8, characterized in that said intermediate segment (21) of said one or more attachment elements is welded to said support (13), (14).   10. Fastening assembly according to claim 8, characterized in that said one or more attachment elements (2) comprise an upper segment (23) secured to said support (13), (14) by at least one fastening member ( 5). 15