Action | Student News
A Shark Ate My Homework?
“Sherman’s Lagoon”Cartoonist Jim Toomey Shows his Serious Side —Sometimes—as
a DEL–MEM Student
by Lisa M. Dellwo
Some people—the lucky ones—have moments of clarity that define their entire lives. Jim Toomey had his at age 12.
His dad, a former Navy pilot, flew a Cessna, and it was “kind of like the family station wagon,” recalls Toomey, who is just completing his first year in the Duke Environmental Leadership Master of Environmental Management (DELMEM) degree program.
“We were flying to the Bahamas for a vacation, and because Dad was flying the plane and we had no particular schedule, we could buzz around and check things out.”
Passing over a lagoon that was “beyond turquoise,” Toomey spotted the outlines of a shark. His dad dropped the plane to about 500 feet so everyone could get a closer look.
Everything about that moment plays into the 46-year-old Toomey’s life: his passion for oceans and their creatures, his reverence for family, his love of flying. Even more, it provided the basis for his internationally syndicated daily cartoon strip, “Sherman’s Lagoon.” Launched in 1991, the cartoon features Sherman, a happy-go-lucky great white shark who lives in a turquoise-blue lagoon with a cranky hermit crab, a bookish sea turtle and other assorted sidekicks.
The strip appears in more than 200 newspapers, including most recently the International Herald Tribune, and in 12 books, including In Shark Years I’m Dead (2006). Toomey counts “Peanuts” creator Charles Schultz and “The Far Side’s” Gary Larson as role models, and indeed, a comic strip in which sharks occasionally eat people sometimes reflects the influence of Larson’s mordant wit.
Although the strip doesn’t carry a heavy-handed environmental message— “you lose people if it’s too educational,” Toomey says—its settings and marine characters have introduced a battery of readers to the marine creatures that have fascinated Toomey since childhood.
Its fans include members of the Coral Reef Alliance, college professors who teach marine biology, and many staff members at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Toomey has contributed artwork for educational posters distributed by NOAA, and, in 2000, he received an Environmental Hero Award from the organization “for using art and humor to conserve and protect our marine heritage,” according to the citation from Vice President Al Gore.
Sherman’s lagoon is on the fictional island of Kapupu, located near the real island nation of Palau, where Toomey’s father served as a Navy pilot during World War II. “It’s my homage to him,” says Toomey, who also is a licensed pilot.