DOORBELL: Two words — fish. doorbell.

Have you heard of it? Doesn’t ring a bell? (See what we did there?)

In the Netherlands, in the waterways of the city of Utrecht are locks, dams and canals that were standing in the way of the migration of the fish that call the water home. Officials came up with a plan, using a webcam and an interactive “fish doorbell” for the fish to navigate the Weerdsluis Lock — an obstacle where fish would gather to wait for a way through.

The public was enlisted to help. Watch the camera and when fish are waiting, ring the doorbell to let workers know.

The first year of the fish doorbell was 2021. There were 100,000 doorbell rings by people all around the world.

While it’s a great idea and a neat project for the convenience of the fish, there’s a lot that can be learned from the webcam, too. The species and numbers of fish in the waterway can be tracked.

Solutions like the fish doorbell are making a difference in maintaining migratory patterns of fish in waterways. In the United States, there’s something totally different with the same goal — a salmon cannon. It sounds like something from The Muppet Show, but we can assure you it’s a real thing.

It transports the fish over dammed off bodies of water through a, well, cannon of sorts. The fish swim into a tube designed as a friction-free environment, which, using a small amount of pressure, pushes the fish along to the other end of the pipe and into the next body of water.

It’s been used all over the place, and the same sort of system on a larger scale is being considered for moving sturgeon. With the size of some sturgeon, it might be big enough to move a person, too. Neat.