For the past 13 years, Jim Toomey has been writing and drawing the daily comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon, about a daffy family of ocean dwellers.

Why you should listen

For the past 13 years Jim Toomey has been creating the daily comic strip Sherman's Lagoon, which appears in over 150 newspapers in North America. Toomey's latest book of comics (his fifteenth) is Discover Your Inner Hermit Crab, and the strip has recently become a musical.

Sherman's Lagoon is a combination of Toomey’s two lifelong passions: drawing and the sea. He’s been engaged in the former activity since he could hold a crayon, and his love affair with the sea dates back to his early childhood. The inspiration for the comic strip can be traced back to a family vacation in the Bahamas where he saw a real shark swimming in a remote lagoon. Toomey became a certified diver at the age of 12, and, as an adult, has logged dives all over the world, including Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America, and extensively in the kelp forests of California

Jim Toomey’s TED talk