Fish in Utrecht had a problem. They were piling up against a 400-year-old canal lock every spring with nowhere to go. Predators found them. Many didn't make it.
Two ecologists fixed this with the Visdeurbe, or "fish doorbell."
They mounted an underwater camera on the Weerdsluis lock and built a website where anyone on Earth can watch the livestream and press a button when they see fish waiting at the gate. The lock keeper gets notified and opens it when enough people have rung in.
In 2024, over 20 million people tuned in. The doorbell was pressed 150,000 times by viewers in the Netherlands, Germany, the US, the UK, and dozens of other countries. Perch, bream, pike, rudd, catfish, and eels made it through to their spawning grounds upstream.
A centuries-old infrastructure problem was solved by a camera, a website, and strangers on the internet who wanted to help a fish get where it was going.
The site is visdeurbel dot nl. Migration season runs through spring. The fish doorbell season has come to an end for 2026, but they'll be back online March 1, 2027. See you next season!
There's an early spongebob episode where squidward casually forgets patrick's name. It always struck me as an interesting detail. Spongebob is a figure in squidward's life, but he thinks very little of patrick beyond "the guy my coworker hangs out with"
do you know about the mosquito bite deleter?
press it onto the bite. push button. beep. gets hot for a few seconds. boop. protein is cooked under the skin. itching stops immediately & permanently