Sidemount Diving and Courses in Thailand

Sidemount Diving is the new way to dive. It’s actually a level in between rec and tec diving as you are taught how to use 2 regulators and using 2 instead of 1 tank.

Sidemount is a scuba diving configuration which has tanks mounted alongside the diver, below the shoulders and along the hips, instead of on the back of the diver. It is a popular configuration with advanced cave divers, as smaller sections of cave can be penetrated and tanks can be changed with greater ease. Sidemount is also growing in popularity with divers who have difficulty handling the heavy double tanks commonly used by cave divers. Shortcomings of this diving style include a greater difficulty in sharing air while diving with team members using backmounted tanks. The UTD Z-System solved this problem.

Sidemount diving began in England, where it was originally used in partially submerged caves. It was an easier method of transporting diving gear between totally submerged sections of the cave (sumps). Americans began using sidemount in the mid seventies for the same purpose. In the early eighties, Wes Skiles, and other Florida cave divers began to use sidemount to explore cave passages that were too low for conventional back mounted tanks. They quickly found that the British style of sidemount didn’t work well in low passages, and slowly developed a “Florida style” form of sidemount. Today, the British refer to this “Florida style” diving as “American sidemount”.

Most sidemount rigs used to be home-made as there were no commercial production of kits like there were for standard scuba rigs. One of the later “pioneers” of sidemount diving was Bill Rennaker, who started making kits available with sidemount accessories such as a custom butt plate.