The Unexpected Global Obsession with a Fish Doorbell in the Netherlands
Aliza Haskal, a 24-year-old graduate student living in Syracuse, New York, has found a unique way to entertain her friends when they visit her apartment. She offers them the thrilling experience of watching a live stream from a camera positioned two meters below the surface of a murky river in the Netherlands.
Every time a fish swims by, Haskal eagerly presses the only button on the website. It’s a doorbell, specifically a doorbell for fish.
This button helps alert a worker in the Dutch city of Utrecht to open a dam, allowing the fish to slip into shallower waters where they can spawn.
“It’s the hottest fish club in Utrecht, accessed through the fish doorbell,” Haskal commented, considering herself a benevolent aquatic gatekeeper.
What started as a modest municipal project to aid fish migration has become an unexpected success far beyond Utrecht. In the four years since its debut, the live stream has attracted an international audience eager to help playful Dutch fish reach warmer waters.
The fish doorbell website, known as “de visdeurbel” in Dutch, has drawn over a million users since it started operating this season on the first day of March. Viewers receive nothing in return for their participation, except the satisfaction of assisting a perch, an eel, or a pike in their time of need.
The camera has captured egg-laden pikes, schools of shimmering bream, a one-meter-long catfish, and a yellow koi that may have been released from captivity. It also caught a local university student diving into the river last year to greet the camera.
Mark van Heukelum, the ecologist who created the fish doorbell, strongly advises against such approaches. “I could see on his face that he didn’t expect the water to be so cold, but he survived,” he said.
The project began in 2020 when Van Heukelum, 37, noticed a group of fish gathering in front of a boat lock at the entrance to the city’s canal system. Cormorants and other predators had also taken notice and occasionally swooped in for an easy meal.
The lock, a set of dams used to maintain the canal’s water level, closes in the spring just as the fish try to traverse the canals to spawn upstream.
With the help of Anne Nijs, the city’s ecologist, Van Heukelum installed an underwater camera to monitor the fish. Each time the doorbell button is pressed, a photo is taken and reviewed by ecologists. When a critical mass of fish has gathered, they alert a group of five municipal employees to open the lock.
Initially, Van Heukelum struggled to convince other residents that the fish doorbell was not an April Fool’s joke. “On opening day, people kept saying, ‘This has to be a joke,'” he recalled. (It didn’t help that the camera started on March 29, 2021, just before April Fool’s Day on April 1).
Four years later, that skepticism has waned. Van Heukelum said he was surprised by the number of people who had become obsessed with his fish doorbell. He estimates that last year, over 6,300 fish passed through thanks to public efforts.
“Realizing that people from the United States, Australia, or New Zealand are helping fish pass through a lock in the Netherlands is a very strange idea,” he said. “I’m over the moon,” he added.
Fish doorbell enthusiasts share screenshots of bug-eyed fish looking at the camera through the green pickle water. They joke on social media about quitting their jobs to become full-time fish doorbell ringers.
Stephanie Matlock, 49, estimates she has rung the doorbell after seeing nearly 30 fish in the last two weeks from her home in Mississippi. She advises her TikTok followers to tune in at dawn and dusk in the Netherlands when the fish are most active.
“We’ve been inundated with politics, hate, fanaticism, and anger for a long time,” Matlock noted. With the fish doorbell, “you’re helping something you wouldn’t normally have the chance to help.”
The project has faced some setbacks: the live stream can only accommodate about 950 viewers at a time, redirecting the rest to a non-doorbell YouTube stream.
Van Heukelum is also aware that his fish doorbell is not as effective a solution as a fish ladder, a stepped system that would allow fish to migrate without collective assistance. (However, it is much more charming and far less costly).
The project’s greatest success may be that people far from the Netherlands are considering personally helping wildlife, said Lisa Brideau, a climate policy specialist from Vancouver and author of a climate novel.
Since the fish doorbell seems to have more than enough staff at the moment, Brideau encouraged viewers to seek out projects in their own areas to counteract human damage to natural ecosystems.
“People crave that connection to nature, even if they live in an urban context,” she said. “The doorbell is well taken care of. Where else can we put that energy?”
