A conch call, like a tropical trumpet, surprises us as we walk toward the pier on Chincoteague Island. Then we spot Capt. Barry Frishman, in his floppy hat and sandals, sounding our welcome on a large conch shell.

Who could resist a greeting like that?

Frishman, who offers three different water tours a day—from two-hour sea life tours to half-day “coastal encounters” on Chincoteague Bay—is pure energy. His 25-foot pontoon boat, Divine Guidance, is a floating classroom and Frishman, 55, an exuberant professor teaching hands-on lessons in ecology and history. He caps off the evening with a champagne sunset cruise so entertaining that even locals, he says, sign on.

If you’re 2 or 92, chances are you’ll learn something new from this man with the soul of an artist, the skills of a master mechanic, and the zeal of a missionary. He’s made his living weaving tapestries, fixing toilets, cooking gourmet meals, and captaining tug- boats. In his spare time he travels the world, teaching villagers in remote places how to drill and maintain sources for safe drinking water.

“Glad to have you here, son,” he booms as we board. On Chincoteague, he says, everyone is “son,” not “cuz” or “man.” So we all become “son” for the morning, including two other passengers, Richard Cahall, a retired school band director, and his wife, Kathleen, an elementary school librarian. From Georgetown, Ohio, they’re vacationing along the Eastern Shore.

“No pressures, no stress—it’s that easy. You talk, I talk, we all tell stories,” Frishman says, outlining our tour. “Son, everyone’s part of the show.”

He cues the music—the theme to “Pirates of the Caribbean”—and we motor under the vintage Chincoteague spin bridge, a drawbridge soon to be replaced, Frishman tells us, by a new span off Route 175.

We sight a great egret, a smaller, snowy egret, and several cormorants. Frishman identifies a scalloper, a tall masted boat with long outriggers, and points out stacks of lobster pots used farther offshore.

He talks about Chincoteague’s annual pony penning and the 50,000 people it draws, the local businessmen who bought land to help the island develop a new park, the old barbershop converted into a library, and how Chincoteague is a genuine community, not merely small town.

If he sounds like a one-man chamber of commerce, blame Frishman’s hitch on the chamber board and his familiarity with most of the island’s 4,000 residents.

“Arsenio!” he hollers to a man on a passing tug, shouts “Rocky!” to a workman on the pier of the local Hampton Inn and “Ahoy, matey” to a few Virginia Marine Resources folks tooling by in an open boat.

Frishman came to Chincoteague from Manhattan 22 years ago with a friend for a few days. When the friend went home, Frishman stayed. “I couldn’t even pronounce the name of the place, but I fell in love with the island,” he says.

He also fell in love with and married a “teaguer”—Aleda, the granddaughter of a Chincoteague lighthouse keeper.

He worked for free on fishing boats to learn the trade. He labored on clammers, on crabbers, and in shucking houses on his way to becoming a tug- boat captain.

“I had to pay my dues, but the locals finally filled me in because they were afraid they’d have to come out at night to rescue me if they didn’t,” he says, killing the engine to ease us into a shallow cove spiked with oyster-covered rocks.

He plucks a cluster of oysters, swishes them through the water to rinse off the mud and, with a shucking knife, pops one open and hands it to me.

“I use smell, sound, taste—all the senses to show people what’s here,” Frishman says. “This ain’t no Disneyland ride, no cyber trip. This is the real deal.”

The delicately briny oyster slides down easily as Frishman explains the life cycle of the Chincoteague salt oyster—from the tiny spat that grow sticking to the rocks to the full-grown beauties like the one I just downed.

“It’s beautiful, feels so fresh out here, and, um, how is that oyster?” a skeptical Kathleen Cahall asks.

But we’re on the move again—more to see and learn.

Frishman explains the tides, and posing as the moon, demonstrates how they rise and fall. Then he unrolls a navigational chart for an impromptu geography lesson. “Chincoteague is a 7-mile island and water’s spread thin, lots of it but only 1 to 6 feet deep,” he says. “Our beaches are growing as sand washes down from the Jersey shore and other beaches north.”

Pulling into another cove, Frishman goes overboard again, feeling along the bottom with his toes for clams.

He pulls up handfuls of green and brown seaweed, edible, he says, and useful in cosmetics and salad dressings. In the glistening nest of seaweed we discover a few tiny brown marsh snails that poke out of their shells in the warmth of my palm.

“The boat is a stage and I’m the emcee,” says Frishman. “The stars are the fish, crabs, and clams.”

Maybe so, but on this exceedingly entertaining tour, it’s Capt. Barry who adds the color.

Captain Barry’s Back Bay Cruises

6262 Marlin St.
The Chincoteague Inn Restaurant
Chincoteague Island, Va. 
757-336-6508, http://www.captainbarry.net

Tours depart daily from spring through fall and range from $30 to $50 per person. Reservations required.

Phyllis Speidell writes from Hampton Roads, Va.