Choosing The Right Fins

hi guys welcome to simply scoober so if you're looking to buy new pair of pins as you'll notice there are so many different styles and sort of colors and sizes out there but which is the right pair of fins for you so this video is we're ready to make your life a little bit easier so that you can make the right decision okay so when you boil it down there are really three types of things out there you get snorkeling fins you get scuba diving fins and then free diving fins so snorkeling fins are typically a full foot fin so as you'll see all of your foots can fit into this which we call a foot pocket these are already made to be worn barefoot so you don't wear any kind of boots with these you can put neoprene socks or even just traditional socks a traditional pair of like trainer socks can help with rubbing sometimes especially if they are a little bit too big for you they can sort of had it out if the water's a little bit colder you can wear a neoprene sock but really they are designed to be worn barefoot they're typically a lot lighter and and they fantastic for travel because of that as soon as you move up into scuba diving you're using a lot more energy you're pushing yourself and a lot more equipment through the water so you need a more robust fin so these ones tend to be a little bit dainty ER for snorkeling and kind of paddling around on the surface which makes them nice and light and fantastic they tend to be a lot smaller and more compact as well but the real difference is that full foot pockets so you wear their foot when you start to move on to scuba diving as I mentioned you're using sort of more energy you're more equipment through the water you're fully submerged through the water as well so you need something a bit more robust and that's where open heel fins come in so open heel fins they have a section where your foot goes in but only the front section of your foot your heel stays out of the back and then you have an adjustable heel strap that just goes over the back of your heel and keeps your foot and your boot inside of there the reason why we wear boot is to be because we're submerged in the water for that much longer so you need the thermal sort of protection as well as a lot of boots they also have that's the rigidity underneath the bottom of your foot on your sole and that helps transfer the energy and you don't get cramped as much the third type of fin is purely for free diving so as you can see these are massive these are designed for free diving is basically snorkeling but too extreme so we're either going down for really long times or you're going down for sort of maximum depth and the way these works they're still a full foot fin but because the blade of the fin is that much longer its transfers that energy through to the water that much more effectively so you're not using quite as much energy they don't require so much energy from your legs and so you can glide through the water but they are quite cumbersome so they're great in sort of open blue water but you can use them while scuba diving I'll use them while scuba diving but if you're sort of swimming in a group then they tend to get in the way you end up stair kicking people if you're trying to swim through a wreck they're definitely very clumsy so for straight-line speed they're fantastic and for energy to the conservation they are very very effective okay so after these are the overall style of the thin one major point that I start to look at is the heel straps and this is just for the scuba diving fins you can get some snorkelling pins that have sort of open heels with an adjustable strap that makes it much easier to to lots of different people or just a fit to yourself because full foot fins tend to be quite limited in their range of sizes you can only fit one maybe two sizes of all person a foot in the fin but with an adjustable heel strap you can really adjust it to to your exact size but for looking at heel straps there are lots of different styles so this is very much the traditional style we call this a ratchet style so you have a one-way ratchet strap that you can tighten you've got two little tabs one on either side and then you push on the button to the lengthen it off and you have to do that at the beginning and the end of every dive you can disconnect them with a little pinch clip but that's very much the tradition all very simple but it can be a little bit bit awkward especially if you're wearing a heavy cylinder you want a boat that's kind of moving around you're trying to put your fins on it it's not the easiest to reach down to your ankles and pull on a pair of straps so the manufacturers came up with a few different alternatives the first one was a bungee heel strap so this one for example this section is a bungee so that's very stretchy and and that just means that it automatically sort of tucks in onto the back of your heel even as your wetsuit boot starts to compress at depth it's still kind of pulling in so it keeps your fin on whereas the ratchet straps a lot of those if you're diving and you go down deep and your wetsuit boots all the tiny little bubbles inside the neoprene actually shrink down because of the pressure that means that you have to retighten those straps whereas these ones tighten themselves this is just made out of a the same material that I made there speargun slings with so it's made to be stretched over and over again is very tough it's very robust and it's very quick and easy to put on all by yourself and you just pull this this big loop up over your heel let go and that sort of holds it in position so they're getting very very popular so there are a few different alternates that are coming out the first one is the spring heels similar concepts except you have a metal spring still stretchy and that still sort of adjust for compression at depth except instead of a as a rubber or silicone sort of sling now we have a big rubber spring a big metal spring I should say sorry and that's going to help sort of attach that one to you but and the third style is a more of a bungee heal style so again you've got that sort of an elasticated bungee it's wrapped up in a cord sort of sheath similar concept as the as the silicone swings but in a slightly different to the direction so they're definitely very very popular more and more things are coming with those add standards and the last type is just for the snorkelling things very very simple we've got three different adjustments so you can sort of take that off and then tighten it up and then put it so it's that little much sort of tighter and you've got all of those adjustments on each side of the fin so you've got sort of five different lengths of heel strap so they're the most basic and then the most popular nowadays are definitely the bungee on a spring heel strap okay so we've looked at the foot pocket and we've looked at the heel strap but now the main section of the fin is the blade so the blade is the bit that's actually increasing the size of your foot and actually moving you through the water so a lot of technology and a lot of design goes into that the first bit is is typically the angle so you'll see a lot of fins actually have a downward angle for the blade from the foot pocket and this just means that basically when you point if you try and do it now if you try and point your foot out with a sort of stretch leg it won't go exactly straight your foot always has that little bit of an angle and this just compensates for that so it makes it more efficient wash in the water but starting off this is what I would call a paddle style thing and so it's just a very simple flat sort of handle a bit like a paddle on a on a boat and it literally just forces the water out of the way so the designs have changed the materials have changed over the years so this one has a little bit of channeling in that you have different types of materials so you have a more rigid material that axle down the center and down each rib on either side so that keeps the shape of the fin but then softer material running down allows the blade to change shape as you should have moved through the water during each part of the kick and that way acts more as a scoop trapping more water and being more effective then on from that they started and notice that the area just in front of the foot pocket is a bit of a dead zone so it actually creates a lot of drag during each part of the fin kick so then vented fins came out as you can see just in front of the foot pocket there's a vent that just goes straight through the fin through to the other side this eliminates the problem of that dead zone it actually increases the efficiency because it directs the water down away from your foot these are typically preferred by more technical divers because they tend to be a lot shorter they're usually made out of a single piece of rubber or neoprene monitoring sorry just a single piece of tough material they're very reliable they're very tough and and they have these ridges running all the way down so the ridges increase the rigidity of the fin and they also act to channel the water down in a straight line instead of going around the edges or off the sides it all gets channeled all the way down to the tip of the fin and that's an amazing thing the reason why they prefer by technical divers is that it doesn't matter what so the Finn kick style you use they're very tough and reliable and they tend to be a little bit shorter as well so if you're diving in caves or an overhead like a like a wreck or whatever they they don't get in the way and they don't sort of get nice and compact so then on from that we get I was mentioning it earlier where you have dual materials so this is what I call a channel fin so this we have these streams of softer material that break up the blade of the fin and they change the shape of it so it creates that scoop you've still got these big rails down either side these are taking all the energy from your foot they're transferring it all the way down the side of the fins all the way down to the tip so it keeps the rigidity of the fin whilst allowing that sort of perfect angle of attack changing the shape of the fins have create more of a scoop and that moves you through the water then all we move to we started to look at nature and seeing how marine animals move through the water because they've had thousands of years of evolution to learn and sort of be the most effective so what we looked at was marine mammals and a lot of seals have a two-part thin and and this is what we call a split fin so these have two they call them leaves so two parts and there's a split all the way down the center and what they discovered is that this is actually very very effective and efficient at transferring energy through the water the way it works is during the the fin kick these blades turn the water and they create a vortex that that pushes you through the water so these are fantastic for people with sort of lower leg or knee problems because they don't use a great deal of energy as you kind of kick through the water they feel very sort of loose and floppy but you really do shift through the water they're very very effective and they don't require a lot of energy the only place where they tend to fall down is that you can only do a certain number of fin kicks you can't do a frog kick because the leaves just they just they twist and they turn and they don't work properly but a traditional scissor kick very very effective and very efficient and even easier to water and then with modern technology and modern design we come up with a sort of a hinged fin so so this is the sea wing Nova you can see we have a separation between the blades and the foot pocket and in the middle is a hinge so the hinge allows for a very accurate angle of attack so again back to that angling of the blade you have to get the perfect angle to transfer the most effective amount of energy from the foot pocket down towards the blade of the film and this does it perfectly by allowing the lower section of the blade to actually twist and and turn to the perfect of a 45-degree angle it's very very efficient and then on the opposite side ruins the downwards kick it's a bit more rigid so again it gets that perfect angle of attack so it's the best of both worlds you still have the channeling you still have those kind of ridges of going all the way down again much like the split fin they do feel very floppy when you're in the water but they have very very effective at moving you through the water so you're not using quite as much energy but you do really move water effectively so that was a quick look at the different types and different styles of fins they're out there on the market today but let us know in the comments below which type of fins that you use and why thanks for watching and safe diving we are an online dive store serving the UK and the world for all your diving equipment needs so why not visit us at simply scuba comm or click the Box on your screen

Channel: Simply Scuba

Views: 115,925

Rating: 4.9016395 out of 5

Keywords: simplyscuba, simply scuba, Simply, Scuba, scuba diving, scuba, diving, Choosing, The, Right, Fins, Choosing The Right Fins, how to pick the right scuba diving fin, Fin advice, help with scuba diving fins, scuba diving fin advice, scuba diving (interest), scuba diving (topic), scuba diving advice, advice video, advice, Simply Scuba advice, Scuba Advice, Mark Newman, Apeks, Scubapro, Mares, Seac Sub, Hollis

Id: xK1o_SMvUIM

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 08 2018