E086 Michael Menduno - InDepth on Sidemount

Awesome to bring you this episode sponsored by XDEEP and with the support of the patrons of Speaking Sidemount. Massive thanks to both for making this podcast possible.

A couple of episodes back, I let you all know that I was working as guest editor along with Stratis Kas, with none other than Michael Menduno to assist in producing what I think is going to be a groundbreaking issue of InDepth Magazine entirely devoted to Sidemount diving. To say this is a coup for the sidemount diving community is a massive understatement and I think it's a real coming of age for sidemount in general.

The issue will be out in early July and will be available to the InDepth Magazine email list and via their website. This issue aside, InDepth is in my opinion, the very best technical diving resource going. If you are not already a subscriber, do yourself a favour and go to the GUE website, Blog page where you'll find InDepth. It's free to subscribe and you'll find a treasure trove of back issues there as well.

Now given the enormity of this InDepth issue for sidemount, I thought it made sense to get Michael Menduno on the show to not only talk about the Sidemount issue itself but also to learn from his incomparable depth of knowledge on both the history and current state of technical diving.

In addition to being a capable technical and rebreather diver, Michael is renowned as a pioneer in technical diving media and is, without a doubt, one of the world’s leading dive media personalities.

In this episode, Michael talks about his start in diving and how this led to a career in dive media. I ask Michael how he coined the term, “technical diving”. Michael shares with us about the progression of technical diving from a few disparate groups to today, where we dive with equipment, processes, and training that has made technical diving safer and also, more capable.

And then we talk at length about the stunning decision to develop an entire Sidemount issue for InDepth, how this came about, and what we can expect to see in this issue. We end with Michael musing on taking a sidemount course himself.

Enjoy :)