Ring the Fish Doorbell to Help Migrating Fish Navigate a Dutch Canal

In a canal in the Dutch city of Utrecht, fish are beginning to mass behind a lock called the Weerdsluis. Now, for the sixth year in a row, you can help them get the attention of the lock’s operators. The Fish Doorbell—or Visdeurbel in Dutch—is back.

Started in 2021, this project allows viewers around the world to monitor the feed from an underwater camera. When they see a fish that wants to move through the lock, they can ring the doorbell and alert operators to the finned animal waiting outside.

“The project is a good mix of doing something for nature and for people to join and do something,” says Anne Nijs, an ecologist for the city of Utrecht and one of the Fish Doorbell’s originators.

Many fish species—including bleak, catfish, eels and pike—traverse the Netherlands’ numerous waterways in the spring to reach their spawning grounds upstream. Even as aquatic creatures are starting to fill the canals, however, ships are still sparse in the early spring, and the locks that allow movement through the water are often closed. This creates an obstacle for migrating fish, most of which start their journeys around this time of year, when the water is first starting to warm.