Ring the ‘Fish Doorbell’: a Unique Way to Help Fish Migrate

Retired Software Distributor Daan Van Rooijen grew up fishing in the ponds and canals of Amsterdam, catching his first fish at the age of five. So, when he recently glimpsed a very large, rare Wels catfish in the waterways of Utrecht, a small city 25 miles south of Amsterdam, van Rooijen felt some of the old excitement of reeling in a big catch.

This time, though, instead of hauling the trophy fish to shore, van Rooijen courteously rang a virtual “doorbell” on the catfish’s behalf, prompting a worker to open a canal lock and allowing the fish to pass through the waterway unscathed. van Rooijen will do this repeatedly throughout the spring and summer months, and sometimes he’ll go onto Facebook to tell his friends about it. These days, it’s safe to say van Rooijen is the one who is hooked.

This might sound like the start of an especially convoluted knock-knock joke, but it is a serious endeavor for the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands’ fourth-largest city that’s brimming with locks and cannals. The municipality, in conjunction with the water management and flood control administrations waterboard, has created an underwater webcam and interactive “Fish Doorbell.” The doorbell project enlists the public in helping fish migrate through the various dams and locks in the city’s canals and rivers. Apparently, if you give a person a fish, you feed them for a day, but if you teach them to ring a fish doorbell, you save fish migration in a small Dutch city.