User blog comment:Somethingmorethan/Useless SpongeBob facts/@comment-1762932-20141005161516

Before Stephen Hillenburg joined Nickelodeon, he taught classes at a marine biology institute in California and once drew a comic called The Intertidal Zone to teach his students about tidal pools. The comic contained many anthropomorphic characters which would later become the characters of SpongeBob - most notably, the co-host of the comic was called 'Bob the Sponge'.