Bernie and I started to work together at SMRU in 1980, an almost unimaginably long time ago.  The fact that I can clearly remember meeting him says a lot.  The fact that we went to the pub on our first day and stayed there too long also says a lot. 

Bernie taught me much in those early days, most memorably that functioning brakes were an optional extra and that he could reliably stop his knackered old Ford van using nothing more than a brick wall.

Bernie was the most instinctively friendly person I have ever known. He could strike up a friendly conversation with anyone and prided himself on the “anyone” bit.  I once heard him debating the meaning of “moral turpitude” with a US immigration official and asking whether he should tick the yes or no box on terrorism.  Lesser mortals would have been sent packing on the next flight back, she let him through with a big grin on her face.  Over the years he pulled off similar feats with irate fishermen, RNLI lifeboat crews, grumpy harbour masters, RAF flight planners, the list goes on. 

Many people have mentioned his enquiring mind.  He always had a question, often an apparently silly one.  You’d dismiss it until you realised there was a kernel of something that you’d never noticed or thought of before. Many of us at SMRU spent the long drives from Cambridge to Scotland trying to answer his profound and important questions, like how many sticky-buns worth of energy are there in a fully laden van doing 80 mph?  Journeys will seem a bit longer from now on.

Along the way we did some really exciting science.  The ARGOS tags, that he and Fedak did so much to develop, blew the study of pinniped movements and foraging behaviour wide open.  It is hard to think that we worked together for 41 years.  It’s even harder to contemplate that he won’t be here from now on. 

His timing always did stink!  

Too soon mate, just too bloody soon!