Ten million pounds of sludge: Top 10 Eco-Flicks - And the Fish Doorbell -- Dennis Hartley

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/04/19/west-coast-aflame-film-at-11-top-10-eco-flicks/

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Hey-have you heard the one about the Dutch Fish Doorbell?

When he created his online “fish doorbell” to aid fish migration in the Dutch city of Utrecht, never in his wildest dreams did ecologist Mark van Heukelum imagine that one day his project would end up being featured on an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

That’s exactly what happened this past Sunday, when Oliver dedicated a full ten-minutes of his show to van Heukelum’s creation, even enlisting R&B artist Mario to perform a love song aimed at helping the fish population of Utrecht get into the mood.

“I was laughing my head off,” van Heukelum told Dutch broadcaster NOS the day after Oliver’s piece aired. “It was bizarre and above all a very positive story.”

The piece also had an immediate effect on traffic to the fish doorbell website, where visitors can press a button if they see fish in live webcam video outside the Weerdsluis lock in Utrecht, which in turn alerts a lock keeper to open the lock to let the fish through.

According to Anna Nijs, an ecologist with Utrecht municipality, visitors to the site nearly quadrupled overnight, with the site logging between 600,000 and 700,000 visits in the 24 hours following Oliver’s broadcast.

“Of course, you don’t need that many people to actually let the fish through,” Nijs told NU.nl. “But we like to make as many people as possible aware of fish migration and the importance of fewer barriers that we as humans have erected.”

Here’s a short news capsule with a nice overview of the project:

In the grand scheme, ringing that bell may feel like a mere drop in the ocean, but as Jacques Cousteau observed: “We forget that the life cycle and the water cycle are one.”

Speaking of water cycles, life cycles, and Mother Nature…this Tuesday (April 22) is Earth Day. You don’t seem to hear much hype about Earth Day anymore; I suppose the media has had other shiny things to chase after; important and impactful stories to be sure, but from a planetary perspective…will all of this fussing and fighting really matter in 50 years? As Grace Slick once sang, doesn’t mean shit to a tree. Believe me, over the millenniums Mother Nature has seen worse; and from her perspective, Earth is only mostly dead.

So there is still hope.

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[blm]

1. "So there is still hope."

[Xavier Breath]

2. I saw the John Oliver story about the fish doorbell on his show last week.

Just like Mr. van Heukelum, I too laughed my head off