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They were presented to the market in 1963 and therefore represent one of the first articles that Ferraro designed for Technisub, the company he founded the previous year. The Caravelle fin has two characteristics that set it above all other existing fins: it is composed of a shoe and a blade that are made from different materials.
The Shoe is made of rubber, which, at the time, was the only material used to produce fins. The blade, however, and this is the novelty, is produced with a new material - polypropylene. This earned its inventor, Giulio Natta, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in exactly the same year that Ferraro employed it for the Caravelle fin. Blade and shoe can be easily dismantled and assembled by hand and the shoe can be used as a normal protective shoe to walk on rocks or sand. But this is not the only benefit of the Caravelle fin. Most of all, the fin ensures excellent performance due to the lightness and elasticity of the blade. Jacques-Yves Cousteau was so enthusiastic about it that he nominated Ferraro "the best fin designer in the world" and, as expected, used it for his team.
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