How To Choose The Right Scuba Fins

Hi, I'm Howard Payne. I'm an instructor with Dive Wimbledon. We're a 5 Star IDC center here in Southwest London, and I teach both recreational and technical diving, and I've been diving for about 8 years.

And today, I'm going to give you a little bit of advice on equipment and how to scuba dive. Let's have a look at some of the fins that we use when we're diving. In order to move efficiently into the water with all of the equipment that we're carrying, we need something to help us swim along, otherwise we don't want to get very far.

So there is a range of different styles of fins, again we are looking at Scubapro here. This is actually a split fin, this kind of divide down the middle. Some people love them, some people hate them, and they're a marmite kind of thing.

Basically, they are easy on your legs and they don't need much work to propel you to the water, but some people don't like the feel of them. But with the feet, you're going to get some kind of cramps, but we're just doing some normal recreational kind of diving and a lot of people swear by them. You see this style has got a spring strap at the back there which is really helpful if you're on a moving boat and you try to get your fins on and you get in the water, that really makes life easier than the kind of plastic clip.

So I would say that if you buy a fin, whether it's got this or it hasn't, it will be worth just buying a set or you can buy them as an add-on and put them on your fins because they make life easier. This is another recent style of fins. These are called Seawing Novas, a very kind of scientific design that's supposed to move you very efficiently through the water.

Again, I can't get on with these but a lot of people swear by them, and you can see a really nice heel strap, a bungee heel strap right there to make life really easy. You'll see this has got like an open foot pocket, so the idea with this is that you have a boot on your foot, so you can walk up down the beach easily and then you just pop the fins on at the last minute. So that's the idea.

Cool! Other types of fins, this is just a simple flat bladed fin, and a lot of people just like a simple fin. These are absolutely fine, a little bit cheaper than some of these more sophisticated designs, so that's that. And you'll see that some people particularly dive in dry suits quite a lot with this kind of simple traditional rubber bladed fin.

Again, you see it's got a spring strap on it rolled a little more than the clip straps. These are a little heavier which you've got a dry suit feet, it may damp your feet down a little bit and stop you from being two feet lighter. This is a style of fin tailored quite a lot for technical divers, so you can see lots of different sorts, again pop into your dive center, have a chat with one of the instructors or one of the specialists there and they will show you the different types and you will find something to suit you. .