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 chord with a lot of readers (and, for a few days, made Uganda the country with the second highest readership after the US). My article that was not about epoxy river tables and Angelo’s piece on decolonizing the Pacific, rounded out the top new reads.
All told, more than 35,000 people read Southern Fried Science in June, putting the month ahead of all but February in terms of total readership and ending the May slump. With the summer in full swing, I expect a bit of a drop off, unless David writes something groundbreaking for Shark Week or there’s big news coming out of the next deep-sea mining meeting. We’re only halfway through it, and 2024 is already our best year since 2020. With an active writing schedule, we are very much on the upswing and could possible meet our 2019 audience levels.
The top ten Southern Fried Science articles for June.
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Experts respond to concerns over the relative risks of electric boats and shark encounters
- Reflecting on my favorite chicken coops.
- This is not an article about epoxy river tables.
- Donald Trump and Sharks: An Annotated Timeline
- Critically Endangered sawfish are spinning in circles until they die. What the heck is going on?
- Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentary
- Decolonize the Pacific Remote Islands
- What is a Sand Shark?
- Megalodon: the New Evidence is a fake documentary
- John Oliver covers Deep-sea Mining on Last Week Tonight
In other news, Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Category 4 hurricane on record and the only Category 4 hurricane to ever form in June. That does not bode well for this hurricane season.