WEIGHT SYSTEMS

If you are diving in warm water with a minimum of weight, how you carry it is a low-priority question. But as you increase the amount of insulation you need, the compensatory amount of weight required makes this an important issue.
None of us carries spare lead for fun, but having too little at the end of a dive is at best inconvenient and at worse dangerous. If your diving rig does not vary often, you need not worry too much about the ease of adjustment of the amount of weight carried. If you dive under varying conditions, this factor might prove fundamental to getting your weight right every time.
If you have already opted for a BC with a built-in weight system you can skip this section, unless you have filled all available weight pockets on the BC and still need to accommodate more!
The traditional nylon belt and cam buckle remains the most economical method of carrying lumps of lead about your waist, and the least comfortable.
The next step up is the pouch belt, which at least puts the weight inside a nylon pouch while offering the possibility of using lead shot packs instead. The length of the belt dictates the number of pouches it contains, and therefore the amount of lead it can accommodate. This is the easiest type of belt for quick and frequent weight adjustment, even while underwater.
The next step is the shotbelt, which has a nice soft and comfortable feel thanks to its lead-shot filling. Add the appropriate amount of shot to the compartment and then close it off. Although capable of fine adjustment, you would not want to be fiddling with your weight on every dive, so some models also include a thread-through belt area or some add-on pouches.
The ultimate solution to carrying substantial amounts of weight is to use a harness system to suspend it from the shoulders. This allows a degree of flexibility in its layout. The weight can be fixed or in releasable pockets.
The tendency to distribute weight about the diver leads to a situation where some of the lead is fixed in position, or cannot be quickly released, and the remainder is held in place by a system that allows quick-release in case of emergency. The amount of releasable lead must be enough to give you sufficient positive buoyancy to guarantee an unassisted return to the surface.