The Who’s Who of Sidemount

Mikko Paasi

Owner of Koh Tao Divers, Finnish-born Mikko Paasi is known as one of the support divers of the Thai Cave Rescue in 2018. A passionate sidemount and CCR instructor and Instructor Trainer, Mikko is actively involved in exploration projects in Thailand including opening up new mine and cave diving opportunities in the region. He is an international member of The Explorers Club.

What is sidemount to you?

I started using sidemount a bit over a decade ago and it quickly became my No. 1 configuration  — not only for overhead environments, but all kinds of diving. Back then, diving for me mostly meant remote wreck expeditions and cavern diving, but I also used sidemount for open water for what I believe are its advantages over twinsuits, including its relatively lightweight and wider availability of tanks. Later, when I took on CCR diving, I went straight for sidemount options. 

Sidemount to me is a smart, modern way of streamlining both equipment and diver. It adds safety via higher awareness of the diver, the equipment and surroundings. One of my favorite things is to move to the side when decompressing in a strong current and give room to the bulky back mount divers who are struggling to hold on the shot line.

What’s the future of sidemount?

Sidemount is constantly moving forward with so many manufacturers offering slightly different approaches, creating healthy competition. On the CCR side, the situation is a bit different. The concept is still very young so there is a lot of room for improvement. We’ve gone from back-mount to chest-mount to sidemount and now to the latest innovation called no-mount CCR that could as well become a new standard in the future. In general, I would appreciate it if someone would come up with a rig that was easier to don and doff and would need half the bungee cord.

How do divers approach sidemount in different locations?

I tend to travel a lot and consider myself an “all-terrain” diver, meaning that I am familiar with multiple equipment configurations and environments. Most of the time, I am based in either Finland, where I am from, or Thailand, where I’ve been running my dive center for decades. These two destinations couldn’t be more different when it comes to sidemount. Sidemount was welcomed with open arms in Thailand. In Finland, not as much. The main reason is that the sidemount is (or feels) a bit more delicate than backmount. However, Northern European countries and the Baltic sea offer a vast playground for sidemount diving, with a huge number of wrecks and mountain caves up in the fjords, so it is only a matter of time until sidemount will become mainstream even in the Arctic circle. 

What adjustments must be made to dive sidemount in cold water?

The main sidemount system is largely universal, but there are many different ways to apply it. Approaches vary based on different environments or diving scopes. For example, sidemount is not so popular in cold arctic waters because, to fully enjoy its benefits, divers need to make quite a lot of adjustments to the original configuration due to the need for heavy undergarments. Tank handling changes dramatically when using heavy steel cylinders instead of light aluminum cylinders. Frequent regulator switching could also cause free-flow scenarios. Divers can’t compromise the one thing they don’t have redundancy for: protection from the cold. Although all these issues can be resolved through special equipment modifications, it can make the whole concept of sidemount seem like its complications outweigh its benefits. 

Return to: The Who’s Who of Sidemount

DIVE DEEPER

InDEPTH: A First Exploration of the Flooded Mines of Thailand by Mikko Paasi

InDEPTH: Discovering The Longest Fresh Water Cave In Thailand by Mikko Paasi