People Paid Full-Time to Fish for Bikes in Amsterdam

Local Editor

It's like they plucked it straight from Toy Story 3 and moved it to Amsterdam. It's a huge hydraulic claw, connected to a crane that sits on the front of the barge.

"That's our equipment for fishing the bikes out of the canal," said Diane Kleinhout, a spokesperson for Waternet, the agency tasked with keeping the canals clean.

Kleinhout said the company had been bike fishing since the 1960s. She said so many bikes were piling up in the canals; they were scraping the bottom of boats.

Along with her were the bike fishermen, Richard Matser and Jan de Jonge. They fish for bikes every day.

"There are a lot of bikes in the water," said de Jonge. "That's why they tow an empty barge behind them. They need a place to put all those bikes."

We start trawling a block or so from City Hall. Matser pilots the boat while de Jonge operates the claw, dropping it into the murky water.

Figuring the whereabouts of the bikes, de Jonge said: "We don't know. We're just searching."

"Fishing for bikes is like plunging your hand in a sink full of sudsy water, searching around for a spoon. You grab around blindly until you find something" she added.

De Jonge said they catch 15,000 bikes a year. Yes. You read that right. To put it in perspective, the city of Amsterdam estimates there are 2 million bikes in the city. So while 15,000 is a huge number, it also means that only .07 percent of all the bikes end up in the canals each year.

The habit of throwing things into the canals goes way back.

"The canals used to be an open sewer," said Kleinhout. "There was no sewer system in Amsterdam so this was the open toilet for the people of Amsterdam."

Both, Richard Matser and Jan de Jonge, enjoy their job and consider it one of the best jobs in Amsterdam.

"I love my job," says de Jonge. "You're standing outside with a lot of freedom around you. So it's a nice job."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team