The Mares Superchannel for Free diving

[epierce]

So, I'm thinking I'll probably be doing some scuba diving here and there, so I want some decent fins for that. But also, i'll probably be doing a fare amount of free diving for lobster at around 15-30 feet. With primarily a flutter kick.. Get down, get the lobster, get back up. So I would want something that is quick, but not crazy huge or annoying for scuba. My legs are plenty strong, so something super soft would just get on my nerves.

So, any kind of experience with the superchannels? Any good alternative suggestions? (mostly warm water btw, I like full foot).

 

[REVAN]

So, I'm thinking I'll probably be doing some scuba diving here and there, so I want some decent fins for that. But also, i'll probably be doing a fare amount of free diving for lobster at around 15-30 feet. With primarily a flutter kick.. Get down, get the lobster, get back up. So I would want something that is quick, but not crazy huge or annoying for scuba. My legs are plenty strong, so something super soft would just get on my nerves.

So, any kind of experience with the superchannels? Any good alternative suggestions? (mostly warm water btw, I like full foot).

It sounds like what you actually want are freediving fins. My suggestion is that you should actually get a pair of freediving fins. They have the added benefit of working better for scuba diving than scuba fins. From a functional perspective, it is all plusses.

 

[REVAN]

The following data is from a review on the DeeperBlue.com website. They tend to have a lot more freediving content over there. Anyway, they were comparing different kinds of fins across a 25 meter lap pool, and the Mares was one of the fins tested. You can see how it compares to long-blade bi-fins. Unfortunately, they did not include times in the data. But as you can see from this the Mares will require 25% more fin strokes to cover the same distance as the freediving bi-fins. I would not be surprised if it also took more time.

Fins:	# of kicks	Notes:
UWH low-angle bi-fins (Mares Avanti Quattro)	15 kicks	Heavy and high resistance / energy expenditure
High-angle carbon bi-fins (Fins4u Pure Carbon)	12 kicks	Reduced resistance / weight and easily able to swim with freedive-level or energy expenditure
No-angle Waterways Model 2	12 kicks	Uncomfortable and unsupported / sloppy blade feeling due to lack of supporting structure
High-angle Starfins Hyperfin	10 kicks	The uncomfortable, fragile, existing benchmark