FINS, Not the Buffet song...

[KMdiver]

OK,


Everyone has a different opinion on fins. I have a pair of Avanti quattros and volos. To me thise are great, but a lot of people say split fins are better. I dont see how thats possible. Also, a lot of the time I see dive masters use freediving fins. Are they really better or are they showing off?

 

[epconti]

Let's see if I remember this right. I asked my LDS owner a couple months ago how split fins could be better than "regular" fins and what he said was it depends on how you kick. If you use a flutter kick more often, keeping the knees bent, you would get more force out of the "normal" fins because of the strong verticle motion. But if you took smaller, quicker (??) kicks, like say if you were caving, then the split fins would be what you are looking for. Hope I remembered that right. Anybody?

- eric

 

[mattengstrom]

This has been discussed a few times here before - just do a search for "split fins".

In a nutshell - split fins=faster straight-line swimming, paddle fins=more versatility.

 

[Blue Space]

Are great fins...If you ever change get jets

 

[Boogie711]

You never want to use split fins for caving - they make for crappy visibility situations.

Ask MikeFerrara, a Cave Diving instructor on this board, what he thinks of splits.

 

[metaldector]

I own Quattros and Splits. I purchased the Quattros about 7 years ago and have about 225 dives on them. I won the Splits in a contest about 3 months ago and have dove them about 7 or 8 times. Honestly, I can't tell the difference!

 

[MikeFerrara]

epconti once bubbled...
Let's see if I remember this right. I asked my LDS owner a couple months ago how split fins could be better than "regular" fins and what he said was it depends on how you kick. If you use a flutter kick more often, keeping the knees bent, you would get more force out of the "normal" fins because of the strong verticle motion. But if you took smaller, quicker (??) kicks, like say if you were caving, then the split fins would be what you are looking for. Hope I remembered that right. Anybody?

- eric

I have never seen a pair of split fins in a cave. The kicks that are required of a cave diver are virtually not possible with split fins. None of the cave diving instructors I know will even allow a student to use them. The modified flutter use in a cave requires a blade without a hole (split) in it. The kick is done with the knees bent and very little motion up and down. In the extreme one might only use their ankle or just shuffle the fins fore and back.

None of that works with a split fin.

I do know a guy who was using them in sumps for a while. Of course sometimes he doesn't use any fins at all. LOL. I think he did it just cause he heard me say that splits weren't any good for cave diving. He took them to the Florida caves (where people can see you) and quickly switched back to real fins.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Boogie711 once bubbled...
You never want to use split fins for caving - they make for crappy visibility situations.

Ask MikeFerrara, a Cave Diving instructor on this board, what he thinks of splits.

While I'm happy to give my opinion of split fins (for what it's worth), I'm not a cave diving instructor.

I am a cavern diving instructor but I don't teach it much. I usually send divers interested in cave diving to a cave diving instructor.

After a couple thousand more cave dives and I might consider it though.