Oil platforms are like highway rest stops to migrating birds – there’s a tempting light, you pull over, but there’s no gas and no food, only a place to poop. The birds, deprived of their birdy Cheetos, circle around, waste all their energy, and expire. So researchers and oil companies came up with a simple solution. Birds see red light well, but barely see blue light. By replacing the oil platforms’ lights with green lights (blue light is too difficult for people to see in), they eliminated 80% of bird pitstops.
Unfortunately, J.P. (our Dutch correspondent) reports that this highly successful project might be coming to a close. Dutch speakers can find the report somewhere in the Leeuwarder Courant, but Google Translator failed me and I couldn’t find any reports in English. I hope there’s a way to revive the program. Because if we can’t solve problems with a cheap, simple fix, how the hell are we going to solve complicated ones?
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