I have only just learned the news that Bernie had passed so please forgive me for the late entry.

I worked with Bernie and the team at SMRU for ten years from January1984

At that time I was the technical department but mainly involved in the development of the burgeoning VHF tracking program. I worked closely with Bernie in the early days of developing VHF tags, direction finding and remote listening stations including the early Satellite tags.

As has been said here by others, he was always ready to get fully involved and was an excellent problem solver.

He had a great sense of humour and kept our spirits up during the often damp cold and wet days out in the field. He had this habit of humming the hymn “for those in peril on the sea” when things got a bit hairy out in the boats, I think mainly to wind me up as I was obviously uncomfortable in some of the situations that we found ourselves.

A good friend and reliable guy to have around.

I particularly remember one day at Seahouses where Bernie and myself were the only two left standing, the other two were sick with a nasty flu virus, so the two of us set out to VHF tag seals on a very damp misty day, hoping to enlist the help of the National Trust wardens who were living out on inner Farne and with help we duly caught and tagged several seals. When it was time to return the mist was so thick that we could not make out any useful landmarks. So with the aid of the chart and a hand held compass we worked our way down the island chain until we got to a position under the cliff of Inner Farne where we took a bearing from the chart and “guestimated” an offset based on the state and direction of the tide and set out for Seahouses harbour with myself at the front pointing out the compass direction and Bernie at the helm, it seemed to take ages and as the expected journey time approached we could see nothing until what seemed to us a cliff loomed up in front of us which was in fact the harbour wall. OK said Bernie lets unload and go get a beer, as if this situation happened every day.

The time a tube of epoxy resin split and leaked in his pocket, he simply added the hardener from his other pocket and rubbed it in so it would harden and cease to be a sticky mess.

He was totally unflappable.

I have many many similar anecdotes.

Bernie you were one of the good guys and will be sorely missed.