Two years ago, researcher Ólafur Arnar Ingólfsson at the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research produced a video about work being done to improve catches of flatfish in seine nets. The video has been there on YouTube for some time – but has suddenly its viewing stats have gone through the roof.
As part of his work, he sometimes edits videos taken using the GoPro cameras that can be mounted on fishing gears to check fishing gear performance. There are a number of videos available and the Institute has its own YouTube channel.
But for some reason, this particular video has gone wild, with more than 300,000 views so far this year, compared to only 30,000 views it had attracted at the beginning of the year. While these figures don’t come close to the big numbers that global hits on YouTube regularly attract – it is a very respectable amount for a relatively long video about fishing gear research with text in Norwegian, not least when it’s taken into consideration that the other 270 videos on Institute’s YouTube channel have totalled 34,000 view altogether this year.
‘I do not understand why the rest of the world’s population is not as interested,’ said Ólafur Arnar Ingólfsson, pointing out that the majority of views are from Thailand, Indonesia, India, Brazil and Malaysia.
The reason for this particular flatfish video’s popularity remains unexplained, and its part two has nowhere near the same number of views – yet.
