April was a slow month. Most of our lead writers were tied up with classes, workshops, and other projects and we only managed to publish 6 articles this month. That’s about a third of our regular output. On top of that, we had a server outage that took us offline for a a few days.
With 16,000 visitors in April, we have officially surpassed our total readership for all of 2023, with average daily visitors still on par with early 2020. That’s not too shabby for a little ocean science blog that’s been dragging itself out of a 3 year slumber.
David’s career advice articles still have the juice, with his post on finding jobs in marine science dwarfing other traffic by an order of magnitude. Angelo’s How much of the US ocean is protected? It depends who you ask didn’t quite hit the traffic numbers (frankly, when David is in the field and not hyping on Facebook and Bluesky, all our traffic drops. Y’all really like the Shark guy, huh?). Some classics made a recurring appearance, including our all-time most read article, Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentary.
Here’s the top 10 Southern Fried Science posts for April, 2024.
- Here’s what I teach my students about finding jobs in marine biology and conservation
- No, a shark did not get a stingray pregnant. But what really happened is pretty cool!
- Your car has just been crushed by hagfish: Frequently Asked Questions
- Ethical Debate: Captive whale sharks
- No, the ship didn’t steer towards the pylon: A brief fact check on the MV Dali collision with Baltimore’s Key Bridge
- A quick and dirty guide to making custom feeds on Bluesky
- I turned my woodshop into a personal solar farm.
- The Glomar Explorer: what we can confirm and deny about “vast government conspiracies” from Project Azorian.
- Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentary
- Bluesky is now open. Science Twitter, here’s how to use it!
Here’s what I’m reading from around the web:
- 5 Early Takeaways From the Biden Administration’s Conservation Atlas
- China Dialog is nor Dialog Earth
- Now Is the Time To Secure President Biden’s Ocean Leadership Legacy
- Joint Statement from the United States and Norway on Cooperation on High-Standard, Market-Oriented Trade of Critical Minerals
- The Deepwater Horizon’s Very Unhappy Anniversary
- Secretary Haaland Announces Up To $95 Million through the President’s Investing in America Agenda for Water Resources and Ecosystem Health
- The cloud under the sea
- Impressions of a scientist at the ISA: March 30th 2024
- Deep-sea mining poses an unjustifiable environmental risk
And over on Deep Sea News, Craig just had a bone eating worm named after him and Dr. Melissa Betters writes about The Cost of Fear: How Perceptions of the Deep Sea Hurt Conservation.
Ocean Blogging is ever so slowly coming back to life, so if you have a new or revived ocean science and conservation blog, let us know about it in the comments.
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