LeadTurn_SD
Contributor
For good reason.
If, for whatever reason, you stepped off the boat without your fins on and were unable to inflate your BC, and your air was OFF, could you keep you chin above water long enough to drop weights and possibly your rig so that you would not immediately sink and drown?
As unlikely as this scenario sounds, divers, including tech divers, have died this way.
Just food for thought.
Best wishes.
I've been taught to put air in my bcd before jumping in the water, its something we always do as part of our buddy check
That is the norm, and is (with the exception of negative drops on high current sites where you intentionally jump in with an empty BC) what most folks do.
My point: Without your fins on it is difficult to swim with full scuba gear on (try it). You should only be as negative as the weight of your air at the start of a dive as a single tank rec diver, so you should be able to keep your head above water for awhile by kicking and sculling.... but with your fins off this is going to be much harder for most people. Now, take the average grossly over-weighted newly minted diver, often with marginal swimming skill, let them jump in the water and have a BC failure and not have fins on. A recipe for a panic and a surface drowning.
Like Dr. Lecter said, if you have half a clue, you'll never have a problem. I enter the water almost every dive with my Jet fins in hand, and my wing nearly empty... but I shore dive. I've gone off boats fins off and fins on (but prefer fins on).
I also come from the pre-BC generation of divers, and still have myself weighted so that I can complete an entire dive sans BC if needed. But there is a very good reason for recreational dive boats to require that their customers exit the boat wearing fins:
Safety for the lowest common denominator, for that occasional diver that really may NOT have half a clue.
Best wishes.