Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online
It’s January 1, 2025. David Shiffman and I have been writing on this old blog for 17 years To mark the milestone, we’ve decided to switch things up. Today, David Shiffman is writing about conservation and biodiversity in the the deep sea. Today Andrew D Thaler is writing about the perception of sharks in the … Read More “Happy New Year from Southern Fried Science!” »
More people care about marine biodiversity and saving the ocean than ever before. But progress towards evidence-based conservation is hindered by widespread public misunderstanding of the key issues in play. You’ve heard versions of this rant from me for 15 years, but this is not a post about sustainable fisheries, or shark conservation. This … Read More “The wrongest belief about the deep sea is wronger than you know” »
Listen to Kernean George, Marcella Harris, and Brett Steigerwaldt on The Rumcast talking about the Rosalie Bay Distillery: Dominica’s First-of-Its-Kind Rum Distillery. Meanwhile, the Cephalosquad seems have largely forgotten that multiple party members are missing and have wandered of to a fancy castle to start an entirely different mission.
It’s been three months since we posted our last traffic update. I’ve been prepping or traveling since August running OpenCTD workshops and the rest of the team is likewise busy with research, outreach, and policy work. We’ve been quiet, only publishing 12 articles in the last quarter and the traffic reflects that. Traffic is down … Read More “Project 2025, chicken coops, seabed mining, and the classics: 3 Months of readership stats for Southern Fried Science” »
The adventures of the Cephalosquad continue on our weekly marine science-themed Dungeons and Dragons podcast, Dugongs and Seadragons. This month, the party attends an academic lecture on renewable energy which gets a little out of hand. We’ve got a Patreon (separate and completely unrelated to the Southern Fried Science Patreon), where you can get behind-the-scenes clips … Read More ““If you were eaten by an owlbear, would your skeleton come out the owl end or the bear end?” This month on Dugongs and Seadragons” »
June saw a major uptick in readers, and not necessarily for the articles you’d expect. The press release that me and David put out and David’s piece on the strange history of Trump and sharks both claimed top billing, but oddly, the short piece I wrote about all the chicken coops I’ve built struck a … Read More “Oddly enough, chicken coops: What you read on Southern Fried Science in June.” »
The former President’s recent bizarre rant about sharks has gone viral on social media, but this is just the latest in a long and weird saga. These tweets are real. Did you know their backstory? July 2007: Donald Trump meets with adult film star Stormy Daniels, inviting her to his hotel room. Upon arrival, he … Read More “Donald Trump and Sharks: An Annotated Timeline” »
May has historically been one of the slowest months on the blog. The weather is getting nice and Southern Fried Science readers and writers have other priorities as the academic year comes to a close. We only published 8 articles this month and logged about 11,000 unique visitors. You were interested in the news that … Read More “Not much: What you read on Southern Fried Science in May” »
Ten years ago, freshly married and freshly relocated to Vallejo, California, I found myself in the midst of reinvention. The cycle of post-doctoral fellowships and short-term contracts necessary for an academic career didn’t suit me. I wanted stability and, importantly, I wanted freedom. Crowdfunding was new. Earlier that summer, OpenROV had shook the crowdfunding world … Read More “Small drops make mighty oceans: 10 years as a scientist on Patreon” »
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. … Read More “You probably don’t want to work for me: What you read on Southern Fried Science in April” »
