What type of FINS should you buy?

Well it depends, first you will need to understand that fins are key components of you scuba gear. You can think of fins in this way: your body is the engine, fins are the propellers. As a general rule fins should fit your foot as if you were wearing shoes. We can divide the fins based on design:

Strap heel fins: This type of fins offer the diver now a variety of options, you will find adjustable straps, non-adjustable (elastic) straps, and even spring (yes, spring! fin straps), metal buckles, plastic buckles, single or multiple water displacement channels or vents, and some other features or modifications of the basic design like the new Split Fins that are supposed to increase your speed and reduce your air consumption underwater. I will write a review on the best Split Fins on the market soon.

Usually, most of the divers use neoprene booties with strap heel fins…and I can tell you from my own experience that it is a great idea!!…blisters are a real pain in the foot!! You will find two presentations of neoprene booties in the market: full neoprene and neoprene with hard sole, personally I prefer the full neoprene version….well unless you plan to walk on rocks, only in that case a wiser selection will be a hard sole bootie.

It is very advisable to buy your booties at the same time that you are buying your fins.

Full foot fins: Compared to the strap heel fins these are less expensive and very popular. If you are going to snorkeling, I will definitely recommend you to use this kind of fins. The full foot fin could be one single piece or a combination of two different materials. I will be posting more details on full foot fins soon.

Some popular brands of fins you can search (and research!) on the Internet are: Aeris, Apollo, APS, Aquatec, Cressi-Sub, Deep Sea, Dive Rite, Genesis, H2O, Mares, Ocean Reef, Oceanic, OMS, Sherwood, TUSA, XS Scuba, Zeagle and….you can also try a search for Bob Evan’s Force Fin, this guy is very creative, I like his products.