OP
David Wilson
Contributor
I own a pair of Al'faplastik Del'fin fins, which can be ordered from online retail outlets such as Dophin fins, which sell to Western countries. I gleaned information about the other Al'faplastik models (I don't own pairs of these as they aren't in my shoe size) not only from the company's website at alphaplastic.ru, but also from other Russian and Ukrainian diving websites and from these countries' equivalents of eBay, namely Доска объявлений от частных лиц и компаний на Avito and https://www.olx.ua/. Ironically, there is more information about the origin and development of fins during the Soviet era, because quite a number of diving manuals were published back then with the information. Several of them came up on eBay recently and I bought them as an object of research and to try and improve my basic knowledge of Russian. I wish I could get more information about the development of Al'faplastik and YaRTI's current fins, particularly the rationale underlying the decision to make two versions of several models, the Al'faplastiks with marbled pockets and the YaRTIs solid black. The impression I'm getting from exploring the Russian web is that western plastic-bladed fins are beginning to make inroads into the Russian market and that Russian-made fins may not be around for ever, which I find rather a sad prospect being somebody who prefers pre-1975 classic fin designs to today's "tupperware" foot appendages.
