Writing

Selected Articles and Essays

• "The Dugong, a Huggable, Seagrass-Loving Sea Cow, Has a New Best Friend: Drones." March 2024. Smithsonian.
  
• "Animal Sex Determination is Weirder Than You Think." April 12, 2023. Nautilus.
  
• "Scientists Invented a Lice Comb for Urban Sea Lions in Chile." June 21, 2019. Atlas Obscura.
• "How the Ocean Will Kill You" and "Tentacles: From Octopus to Alien." in: Putting the Science in Fiction: Expert Advice for Writing with Authenticity in Science Fiction, Fantasy & Other Genres. Edited by Dan Koboldt. Writer's Digest Books, 2018.
• "Humane studies of octopuses get a boost." April 6, 2018. Science.
• "A New Species of Giant Octopus Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight." December 25, 2017. Earther.
• "How Exactly Could a Squid 'Inseminate' Your Mouth?" io9. 6/26/12.

Fiction

"Talk To Us," my short story about the evolution of octopus society on an almost-post-human Earth, was published in Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology (Obsolescent Press, 2013).

"Incoming" is flash fiction about three giant squid who are just as ambitious and reckless as young adults of any other species.

I've also completed a novel for young readers called Heart Set Free. It's the story of a girl and her squid. Here is a reference to the very early genesis of the idea, here is a silly drawing, and here is an excerpt.

And then I've got about seventy-hundred and twelve-teen other partially drafted short stories and novels. Here's a summary and an excerpt of one called The Sky Mother's Children.

Research

• 
  Staaf, D.J., Gilly, W.F., Denny, M.W., 2014. Aperture effects in squid jet propulsion. Journal of Experimental Biology.
• Staaf, D.J., Redfern, J.V., Gilly, W.F., Watson, W., Ballance, L.T., 2013. Distribution of ommastrephid paralarvae in the eastern tropical Pacific. Fishery Bulletin 111: 78-89.
• Staaf, D.J., Zeidberg, L.D., Gilly, W.F., 2012. Effects of temperature on embryonic development of the Humboldt squid, Dosidicus gigas. Marine Ecology Progress Series 441: 165-175.
• Villanueva, R., Staaf, D.J., Argüelles, J., Bozzano, A., Camarillo-Coop, S., Nigmatullin, Ch.M., Petroni, G., Quintana, D., Sakai, M., Sakurai, Y., Salinas-Zavala, C.A., De Silva-Dávila, R., Tafur, R., Vidal, Erica A. G., Yamashiro, C., 2012. A laboratory guide to in vitro fertilization of oceanic squids. Aquaculture 342-343: 125-133.
• Mazzillo, F.F.M., Staaf, D.J., Field, J.C., Carter, M.L., Ohman, M.D., 2011. A note on the detection of the neurotoxin domoic acid in beach-stranded Dosidicus gigas in the Southern California Bight. CalCOFI Reports 52.
• Staaf, D.J., 2010. Reproduction and early life of the Humboldt squid. Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University.
• Staaf, D.J., Ruiz-Cooley, R.I., Elliger, C., Lebaric, Z., Campos, B., Markaida, U., Gilly, W.F., 2010. Ommastrephid squids in the Central and Eastern Pacific show a convergent biogeographic break but divergent population structures. Marine Ecology Progress Series 418: 165-178.
• Staaf, D.J., Camarillo-Coop, S., Haddock, S.H.D., Nyack, A.C., Payne, J., Salinas-Zavala, C.A., Seibel, B.A., Trueblood, L., Widmer, C., Gilly, W.F., 2008. Natural egg mass deposition by the Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) in the Gulf of California and characteristics of paralarvae. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 88: 759-770.
• Moltschaniwskyj, N.A., K. Hall, M.R. Lipinski, J.E.A.R. Marian, M. Nishiguchi, M. Sakai, D.J. Shulman, B. Sinclair, D.L. Sinn, M. Staudinger, R. Van Gelderen, R. Villanueva, K. Warnke, 2007. Ethical considerations when using cephalopods as experimental animals. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 17: 455-476.
• Shulman, D.J. and F.G. Hochberg, 2007. Dicyemida. In: The Light and Smith Manual: Intertidal Invertebrates from Central California to Oregon, 4th edition (ed. James Carlton). University of California Press.
• Hochberg, F.G. and D.J. Shulman, 2007. Cephalopoda. In: The Light and Smith Manual: Intertidal Invertebrates from Central California to Oregon, 4th edition (ed. James Carlton). University of California Press.