Eco-Touring By Kayak

The natural and the, um, unnatural lie in close proximity along the Coastal Highway. Beyond the seemingly endless succession of Sunsations storefronts that cluster near the area's resort beaches, motorists pass a sign whose unlikely legend indicates the presence of the natural world:

"Turtle crossing area."

Shortly thereafter, a pair of multicolored flags mark the entrance to Coastal Kayak (877/445-2925). Located between Fenwick Island and Bethany Beach, across the highway from Fenwick State Park, the company offers guided eco-tours of the area's coastal waterways. Tours cost $35 to $40; kayaks and sailboats are also available for rent, with rates varying from $15 to $20 an hour and including basic instruction.

For visitors addled by the lure of the boardwalk, it can be easy to forget that there's wildlife at the beach. A kayak tour of a salt marsh or in the ocean proper is a good way to get a reminder. At Coastal Kayak, there are a variety of options: The one I chose, the Burton's Island Tour, is the company's most popular, the best-suited to novices of all ages.

You need not be a seasoned outdoorsman to kayak. My guide, "Mitch" Mitchell, briskly goes over the basics as we stand ankle-deep in the placid waters of Indian Bay, just north of Indian Bay Bridge.

"The hard part is getting in," he says.

It's true. The paddling is fairly intuitive -- if you do it wrong, the kayak doesn't move, if you do it right, it does.

As the bright yellow Acadia kayak sits on the sand, a horseshoe crab swims into the shallows and noses around under its prow, its spike of a tail twitching above the surface of the water like a cat's. It's breeding season for the horseshoes, and this is not the last one we see today.

The slick, black heads of diamondback terrapins poke up out of the water like periscopes as we move through the marsh. Our route is punctuated by osprey nesting platforms, and we paddle close enough to see the familiar blue plastic of a grocery bag woven into the tangled branches of a nest. We also pass close enough to cause vocal outrage among the ospreys, who settle back onto the platforms as we pass.

The salt marsh is saturated with fresh seawater at every high tide, which is vital to the sustenance of its delicate ecosystem. The water, transparent in places, is thick with vivid green algae. Marsh grass juts out of the water, jumbles of Atlantic ribbed mussels cluster below the waterline.

After about 45 minutes of paddling, we reach our destination, a sand bank populated by a cackling mass of shore birds that rise into the air as we approach. We pull the kayaks onto the shore and explore. The sand bank is covered with the prints of its most recent inhabitants -- ruddy turnstones, willets and at least one raccoon.

The shore provides a diorama on the life cycle of the horseshoe crab. Pockets of fresh eggs dot the sand. As we squelch through the shallows, a pair drift by, locked in coitus. And the bleached out exoskeletons of dead crabs lie in the sand.

Mitch picks up a live horseshoe crab as it swims by, and flips it over for a quick anatomy lesson. "There's nothing on a horseshoe crab that can hurt you," he says. One of the crab's ungainly pinchers holds my thumb in its grip. Coastal Highway could be a million miles away.

-- Nicole Arthur