Fins Predator Power

They have enjoyed good reports in certain other British diving magazines too, but I sometimes wonder if these tests are little more than perfunctory experiences in someone’s swimming pool.
So I took a pair away with me to Palau, intending to see how they performed in the powerful ocean currents usually experienced at dive sites such as Blue Corner and Peleliu Cut.

The Fins
Predator Power fins look to be made of the sort of black rubber that lovers of traditional heavy Jetfins appreciate. However, they weren’t that heavy, at about 2kg for a pair in XL size to suit my big plates of meat.
The foot-pocket is capacious and the wide blade emulates the shape of a dolphin’s tail over the major section, finished off with a jack’s tail at the terminating end.
The fins have simple straps that can be adjusted by selecting the appropriate pair of holes to slip over lugs in the side of the foot-pocket.
The samples were available in a range of flexibilities, and I took time with the inventor
to select a pair that suited me, by trying them in the demonstration pool at DEMA in Florida.

In The Water
The fins felt very comfortable and effective when I put them on and started finning. For my first dive with them, I was in German Channel in Palau, hoping to get some close-ups of the manta rays that visit a cleaning station there.
I surged forward against a slight head-on current, and admittedly thought that these fins were going to be very good indeed. They seemed to take little effort to move through the water.
It had been explained to me that the best result was obtained by using a finning action akin to kicking off a loose shoe. Other reviewers have said they got the feeling that they could
fin all day without a hint of tiredness.
All was good for the first 20 minutes or so, but what I hadn’t realised was that my frequency of kicking was a lot higher than usual. I began to tire, but the force of the ocean did not. Making headway started to take a lot of effort.
Jamie Watts, who writes marine-life articles for DIVER, had enthused about the fins at DEMA, but I noticed that his legs were a lot shorter than mine and his heart around 30 years newer.
Forty minutes into the dive, I was getting very fatigued, but had to continue finning if I was not to be gently swept away from the dive site. My breathing became laboured and my breathing rate increased.
Eventually I started to run low on gas, and gave up the fight 45 minutes into the dive.
I allowed myself to be taken at the mercy of the gentle current and made my way to the surface, where I deployed my surface marker flag and was picked up by the boat.
It hadn’t been much of a current. I dived twice more at that site the same week in similar conditions and got more than an hour from my tank while wearing a more familiar pair of fins.
I certainly wasn’t going to risk wearing the Predators on one of those high-voltage current dives for which Palau is famous.
Instead, I took them to Jellyfish Lake, where I snorkelled successfully with them. However, during the long surface swims to find the massed jellyfish, I noticed other divers from
my group easily out-swimming me.
I guess a competitive fin swimmer might get better results from these fins, but I did better with a pair that cost one-third of the £200-plus these fins cost, and was confident enough to
use them even in very powerful ocean flows.

COMPARABLE FINS TO CONSIDER:
None

SPECS
PRICE £207
SIZES S-XL
CONTACT www.predatorpowerfins.com
DIVER GUIDE