Sidemount Diver

Let’s take a minute to answer some questions:

What is sidemount diving?
Sidemount diving is an alternative configuration of your equipment that moves your main tank (either one or two tanks) to your waist. Sidemount diving started in Europe in the 60′s to allow divers to squeeze through tight spots while exploring sumps. Divers brought the technique here and it is widely used in places where using back mounted tanks will not allow divers to go through tight spaces during cave and wreck exploration. The benefits of this type of diving can be extended to recreational diving.

Why is sidemount diving growing so quickly?
The benefits of sidemount can be broken down into three areas, comfort, safety and control in the water.
Comfort: Sidemounting uses a harness, which can be adapted to a person’s physical characteristics and abilities. The weight of the harness is distributed with the center of gravity of the tanks being around your waist. Walking in the gear is a lot easier. Or you can put your harness on and attach your tank(s) in the water. Also, you can use smaller 40cf tanks on both sides – 40cf tanks weight only 15 lbs empty, which makes moving them around and wearing them very easy.
Safety: With a two tank sidemount configuration, you have two tanks and two regulators offering a completely redundant air system for you underwater. This configuration is the basic technical rig, which is significantly different from the normal recreational scuba setup. Diving with this setup does require some training that will allow you to think differently about handling emergency situations. One consideration is making sure that your buddy knows the air sharing procedure if they are diving with you – although the procedure is very easy due to the longer hose you will pass over to them, they should know what to expect.
Comfort: One of the most amazing things about sidemount diving is how much more streamlined you are, which means less effort moving through the water. Another benefit is that your buoyancy and trim becomes a lot easier as well – and the sidemount rig wll allow you to adjust your trim in the water “on the fly”. Your tanks are held up along your sides and out of your way. One of the most comfortable feelings you will have is not having anything in front or behind you.

What training do I get?
The training comes in two major parts. The first is classroom and includes a little about the history of sidemount and then we go hands on to set up a sidemount rig. While working on the rigging, we will discuss some of the options of how you rig, the benefits and drawbacks of some of those options and resources that you can use. The open water portion consists of four dives. During these dives you will be practicing air sharing skills, air management (got to keep balanced), tank trimming, buoyancy, no mount and even monkey diving if you want to try it!

What can I do after the certification?
Go diving!!! You can also continue to do the Introduction to Tec diving at the same time – a short add-on to the sidemount course. You can continue to do your training courses in sidemount. No matter what you do, you’ll be the coolest diver there!