page_title: Sidemount diving
section_title: Level 2
hierarchical_section_title: Sidemount diving / Training / Level 2
caption_attribution_description: English: Tec Sidemount diver as part of a mixed (backmount/sidemount) technical diving team.
context_page_description: Sidemount is a scuba diving equipment configuration which has scuba sets mounted alongside the diver, below the shoulders and along the hips, instead of on the back of the diver. It originated as a configuration for advanced cave diving, as it facilitates penetration of tight sections of cave, allows easy access to cylinder valves, provides easy and reliable gas redundancy, and tanks can be easily removed when necessary. These benefits for operating in confined spaces were also recognized by divers who conducted technical wreck diving penetrations.
  Sidemount diving is now growing in popularity within the technical diving community for general decompression diving, and is becoming an increasingly popular specialty training for recreational diving, with several diver certification agencies offering recreational and technical level sidemount training programs.
context_section_description: "Technical" or "Tech" (sometimes called "advanced") sidemount courses develop higher level sidemount skills with a focus on technical decompression diving with 3 or more cylinders. A higher level of equipment proficiency and diving skill is required; as additional deco cylinders will be added to the rig, enabling mixed-gas and accelerated decompression procedures to be conducted.
  These courses generally require the student to be already certified as a technical diver (when crossing over from a backmount tech qualification), or the student first learns tec sidemount as a prerequisite for completing further technical decompression training in sidemount configuration.
caption: A technical sidemount diver as part of a mixed (backmount/sidemount) technical diving team
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "2098", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:06:08 21:40:14", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:06:08 21:40:14", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}