Maybe pulling the chute is the normal ditching procedure for a cirrus with an airframe chute. The splash down looks to be very gentle compared to a normal gliding ditch with fixed gear. It's also less prone to pilot error; once you are dangling there is not much the pilot can mess up.
I imagine the checklist being something like:
pull chute
when aircraft stabilizes open door put on life vest and prepare raft
should plane roll and sink get out and on the raft