Dive Fin Care & Maintenance it is real easy.

Now that you’ve invested anywhere from $90 to $250 on a good pair of diving fins, its time to make sure your investment is well protected.

You’d think that people would treat all of their diving gear with the utmost care. After all, this stuff isn’t exactly cheap. But the truth is, that diving is a physical sport and after you come home from a two tank dive, you’re usually exhausted and the last thing on your mind is taking care of your dive equipment.

Maybe you throw you fins on the patio to dry, maybe your garage. And where is that weight belt?

Did you toss it to dry with your fins? Did you toss it on your fins?

I know there’s a lot of gear to take care of and I know you’re tired after your dives, but if you invest just a little bit of time you can drastically increase the life of your equipment.

Saltwater and your Dive Fins

Dive fins can be made from all sorts of material and saltwater will kick the crap out of almost every one of them.

The first thing you need to do when your dives are over is wash your fins with clean fresh water, this is very straight forward dive fin care and maintenance.

Even after a freshwater dive you should rinse your gear because sand and algae can take their toll too, but it’s nothing compared to the destructive power of salt water.

After you finish your saltwater dive rinse your fins as soon as you can; preferably wash them before they begin to dry. Once the saltwater starts to dry, salt crystals will begin forming on your beautiful dive fins and they’ll slowly but surely start tearing the fins apart.

At first you may not notice anything, but after a couple of dives the fins will start becoming more brittle and small things will start to go wrong (like your fin strap snapping). Save yourself a lot of headaches and rinse your fins out as soon as possible.

Keep your fins out of the sun

Sun and heat can be just as destructive as saltwater, maybe more so.

Have you ever had a car that you constantly kept in the sun and never conditioned the dashboard? It cracked didn’t it? The same thing can happen to your fins.

Constant exposure to the sun will cause your fins to fade and it’ll also strain the structural integrity of the fin. Preventing this kind of damage is easy. Just keep your fins out of the sun.

If you followed my previous suggestion and washed your gear, you should be able to store them in your house or garage without any problems.

How do you store your Diving Fins?

When you’re storing your fins, make sure you never store them with the fin tips on the ground or bent in any way. If you do, you could end up with “elf fins,” a condition in which the tips of your fins are permanently curved upwards.

Your fins most likely came with inserts to maintain the shape of the pocket. Hold on to these so you can insert them every time you store your fins. This small step can prevent your fin pocket from collapsing which makes them much less comfortable.

In addition, make sure you don’t store your weight belt, air tank, regulator, or anything else on top of your fins.

True it does take a little extra time to make sure your fins are properly cared for, but if you do it right you can be one of those people on the dive boat saying how you’ve had these fins for 20 years and wouldn’t dive with anything else.

If you don’t, you could be coughing up another $150 or so next month.

Good luck and safe diving!

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