Help These Fish in the Netherlands Ring the Doorbell

I’m waiting for the fish to show up on this webcam . It’s day here and it’s evening in the Netherlands, so I may have missed the peak of fish activity at dusk. But the site says that eels and pikes often appear at night, so I’m still hopeful. And when the fish start showing up, I’ll ring the doorbell for them.

This “visdeurbel” (fish doorbell, say it out loud) is a project from the city of Utrecht, where fish swim from the river Vecht to the river Kromme every spring. As explained on the fish doorbell website, the city has many canals and rivers, and the fish are part of the local wildlife. They eat aquatic insects and help maintain good water quality.

But every spring, when the fish migrate to the shallow waters to breed and lay their eggs, they run into man-made structures like dams and sluices. They may pass when someone opens the lock, but while they wait, they are in danger of being eaten by predators such as herons and cormorants. This is where the fish doorbell comes in.

The Weerdsluis , or Weerd Lock, is one of the structures that fish cannot cross on their own. Workers open the lock to let the boat through, but it’s harder for them to know when the fish are waiting to cross. (Because they are underwater and all.) Hence the webcam: you can enter from anywhere in the world to watch the fish. When you see them waiting, press the big red button to ring their doorbell. This alerts the keeper of the lock, who can then open the lock.

Gateway , by the way, something like an elevator for water. It is used to connect bodies of water, one of which is at a slightly higher elevation than the others. The compartment can be filled or drained so that boats – or, in this case, fish – can move from the lower level to the upper one, or vice versa.

The Visdeurbel website notes that over 10,000 fish swam through the lock last year thanks to the help of doorbells like you. The fish migration season is just beginning and activity is expected to pick up in mid-April. But if you check it out today, you might be able to open doors for some of those who arrived earlier.