Scuba Diving Fins

Open-heel or full-foot: start with your feet

Almost every fin decision starts at the foot pocket, not the blade. Get that wrong and the best blade in the shop will still rub, slip or cramp you halfway through a dive.

Open-heel fins

Open-heel fins take an adjustable strap across the back of the heel and are worn over a dive boot. That is the setup for UK water, for drysuit diving, and for any shore entry where you are picking your way over rock or shingle before you get wet. The Aqualung Storm and Storm Max sit here, along with the Mares Avanti Quattro +, the Mares AVANTI Quattro 4X and the Mares AVANTI Superchannel OH. TUSA is well represented too, with the SF5000 LIBERATOR X-TEN, the HyFlex Tri-Force, the SF0107 HyFlex SWITCH PRO, the SF0104 HyFlex SWITCH, the SF0102 IMPREX DUO, the SF15 X-PERT Z-3 ZOOM and the SF0114 SOLLA supplied with a bungee strap. The Fourth Element REC Fins cover the same recreational ground.

Full-foot fins

Full-foot fins slip straight onto a bare foot or a thin sock, with no boot and no strap to adjust. They are lighter, they pack smaller, and they are the sensible choice for warm water, liveaboards and snorkelling. The TUSA Solla Full Foot Fins and the TUSA RF20 Platina Full Foot Fins are the full-foot pairs in this collection.

Technical, drysuit and travel fins

Short blades for technical diving

Technical divers overwhelmingly choose a short, stiff blade. It gives you a clean frog kick, a usable back kick and a tight helicopter turn, and it keeps your wash off the silt when you are inside a wreck or working along a quarry bottom. The Apeks RK3 is the pattern most people know, with the RK3 HD as the heavier-duty version and the newer Apeks RK4 alongside it. The XDEEP EX-1, the Mares XR Power Plana LT and the Fourth Element Tech Fins are built for the same style of diving. Pair any of them with a spring strap and they go on over drysuit boots without a fight.

Fins that fit in a suitcase

If your diving involves an airport, fin length and weight start to matter. The TUSA SF0110 Travel Right Fins and the Beuchat X-Voyager are designed with baggage allowance in mind, and the TUSA SPORT UF0103 Compact Snorkeling Fins pack down further still for anyone whose main aim is a mask and snorkel holiday rather than a full kit trip.

Freediving and snorkelling

Breath-hold diving asks something different of a fin: a long blade that moves a lot of water for a small, slow leg movement, because every wasted kick costs you oxygen. Beuchat covers this with the Mundial One and the Mundial One-50 freediving fins. For snorkelling, where you want something easy underfoot rather than powerful, the TUSA SPORT UF21 Snorkeling Fins and the TUSA SPORT UF0103 Compact Snorkeling Fins are the straightforward choices.

Straps, buckles and spares

A fin usually outlives its strap. Rubber perishes, buckles crack, and a strap failure on a boat is an annoying way to lose a dive. We keep the TUSA TA81 Spring Strap Set, the TUSA TA0915 Universal Bungee Strap Set, the TUSA TA0914 Travel Right Bungee Strap Set and the Beuchat SS US Buckle nylon strap in the same collection as the fins themselves. Plenty of divers fit spring or bungee straps to fins that shipped with standard rubber, simply because they are far quicker to get on and off in thick gloves. Check the buckle fitting on your own fins before ordering.

Try before you buy

Fins are hard to judge from a photograph. We hold demo versions of our most popular fins so you can get them on your feet, in the water, with your own boots, before you commit to a pair. Talk to our sales team and we will sort it out.