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 from our June high, but still up by almost an order of magnitude from this time last year and we are on track to have our biggest year since 2019.
This quarter, unsurprisingly, folks were reading a lot about Trump and Project 2025. With Twitter dying and the great migration underway, we saw a big surge in traffic to our articles about Bluesky and how to build custom feeds to make Bluesky your own (follow The Ocean Commotion for all the marine science, policy, conservation, and inspiration on Bluesky). For reasons I can’t explain, 13,000 people read my short article on chicken coops. I, too, think my chicken coops are pretty cool.
Almost 12,000 people visited Southern Fried Science in August, a month where we only posted 3 articles. Angelo prepared a suite of resource to help ocean advocates respond to Trump’s Project 2025. David announced that Bonnetheads are the Best Shark of 2024. I reported that the Secretary General of the ISA has been voted out and will be replaced by the first woman and first oceanographer to head the International Seabed Authority. You were all really into checking out my old chicken coops.
What you read in August, 2024:
- Reflecting on my favorite chicken coops.
- Leticia Carvalho will be the next Secretary General of the International Seabed Authority
- A quick and dirty guide to making custom feeds on Bluesky
- Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentary
- What is a Sand Shark?
- Megalodon: the New Evidence is a fake documentary
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Experts respond to concerns over the relative risks of electric boats and shark encounters
- Donald Trump and Sharks: An Annotated Timeline
- How Trump’s Project 2025 would reshape America’s oceans
- Your car has just been crushed by hagfish: Frequently Asked Questions
Things picked up in September, with more than 15,000 people visiting the blog. We we a bit more active, with 6 articles posted during the month. David wrote about the most liked image on Bluesky and new research into why sharks jump. I looked into the curious resurrection of the long dormant deep-sea mining site, Solwara I and posted some fresh tests of the OpenCTD. And yet, once again, those chicken coops got an order of magnitude more page views than any other post.
What you read in September, 2024:
- Reflecting on my favorite chicken coops.
- A quick and dirty guide to making custom feeds on Bluesky
- Bluesky is now open. Science Twitter, here’s how to use it!
- Here’s what I teach my students about finding jobs in marine biology and conservation
- Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentary
- The story of the pride flag made from NASA imagery: Bluesky’s most-liked image
- Jumping the shark: New study reviews the breaching behavior of sharks and rays
- What is a Sand Shark?
- What is going on at Solwara I?
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Experts respond to concerns over the relative risks of electric boats and shark encounters
This month, more than 17,000 have come to Southern Fried Science to read about the ocean. At last, the all-consuming chicken coops were usurped by some ocean science as giant deep-sea tube worms took center stage. Angelo wrote about six ways to support the America the Beautiful for All Coalition. Over all, October has not been a very active month.
What you read in October, 2024:
- Giant tube worms dwell in the deep places beneath the ocean floor.
- A quick and dirty guide to making custom feeds on Bluesky
- Reflecting on my favorite chicken coops.
- What is a Sand Shark?
- Bluesky is now open. Science Twitter, here’s how to use it!
- Your car has just been crushed by hagfish: Frequently Asked Questions
- The story of the pride flag made from NASA imagery: Bluesky’s most-liked image
- Here’s what I teach my students about finding jobs in marine biology and conservation
- What can the funniest shark memes on the internetz teach us about ocean science and conservation?
- Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentary
My core hypothesis for this year is that people want to read blogs. There’s something important and powerful about self-hosted, ad-free, AI-free websites where people with specific expertise write about things that matter to them. After years webrot from social media algorithms and synthetic content, people are hungry for genuine connections to actual people, unmediated by major tech companies.
Southern Fried Science is free and ad-free. Southern Fried Science and the OpenCTD project are supported by funding from our Patreon Subscribers. If you value these resources, please consider contributing a few dollars to help keep the servers running and the coffee flowing. We have stickers.
