How To Become A Sidemount Technical Scuba Diver Exam

It was difficult to get into the pool for my first session. I felt like an open water diver, securing myself in twin tanks and conducting valve drills. As we went through the Tec 40, 45, and 50 courses, I found new skills and was enjoying the course. The best part about Tec diving is the ability to improve your buoyancy, awareness and dive skills. It's quite an experience to know that you can manage life-threatening emergencies at depth without having to go to the surface due to decompression requirements. It's also satisfying to execute your dive plan with military precision.

Different depths require the use of different gas mixes. The maximum partial pressure of oxygen a diver wants to dive at is 1.4 which is reached on air at 56m. Due to the water pressure the pressure of each individual gas increases and therefore we need to use appropriate mixes if we choose to go deeper. In general, the more oxygen a gas mix has the less deep we can go. A tech diver will use low oxygen mixes at depth and high oxygen mixes coming up shallower to off-gas Nitrogen faster and decrease the mandatory decompression time overall.

When or why I decided to do my Sidemount course I don’t remember. As with most of my diving decisions, it was probably a case of – oh that looks cool, could be useful, I’m going to try it!I knew that Sidemount was going to be a useful certification and something that I could use in the future and build on. I also knew that I eventually wanted to do some proper cave diving and that a Sidemount certification would come in handy for that.

If you plan to go sidemount, particularly if you are a tec diver already, you will need to learn about your new rig. How to adjust it, how it can be used to enter the water, and more.

Sidemount rigs were originally designed for cave diving. They allow the diver to easily pass through cracks and restrictions (tiny holes), much faster than traditional back mount rigs.

Skills (specific) – Throughout the tech programs the specific dive skills for that category of diving are practiced until faultless. For overhead diving navigation and line skills are honed in until they’re automatic. Decompression divers can plan and execute the stops and gas management without blinking an eye. Rebreather divers meticulously build, test and break down their units to ensure perfect functionality of the equipment. Skills for each course are laid solid in the first level of certification, and advanced from there. Each step deeper or further hones these skills and adds additional challenges to develop a well rounded, well prepared and well informed diver.