A scientist and engineer who served many years as Bermuda’s resident seismologist was also a top fisherman and mariner.

Miles Mayall got the chance to combine his two passions — science and the ocean — when he joined the US Navy’s Sofar station at St David’s, tracking submarines using underwater acoustics.

The acronym comes from sound fixing and ranging, a naturally occurring sea “channel” carrying sounds over vast distances.

It was used to track Soviet subs, but Mr Mayall also hunted for the low-frequency vocalisations of whales, including the elusive fin whale.

The technology, which could find the source and depth of sounds, also showed promise in tracking downed vessels.

One night in May 1968, Mr Mayall was called back into work after the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion vanished in the Atlantic.

The team tracked the source of an explosion and determined that the sub had gone too deep for its design.

Its wreckage, complete with armaments and nuclear reactor, remains on the sea floor.

The Sofar station moved to Florida in 1982, and Mr Mayall switched to work as a telecommunications engineer.

However, he continued running a Bermuda College-funded seismograph station beneath Harbour Radio at Fort St George into the 1990s.

Mr Mayall got used to calls from The Royal Gazette whenever residents noticed a tremor.

Mr Mayall was born in England, but in 1942 the family sailed for New Brunswick, Canada, where his father, a doctor, was stationed with the Royal Air Force.

There they became close with their neighbours, the Graystons, a Bermudian family.

The Graystons suggested a trip to the island when the children fell ill during the harsh Canadian winter.

The family, who had intended a six-week stay, never left Bermuda.

Mr Mayall quickly acquired a love of fishing, and showed early promise as a scientist at the age of 11 by building an incubator to hatch poultry, which made the front page of the paper.

He studied electrical engineering at Dalhousie University, and in 1964 met Brenda Gibbs, a British nurse whom he married in 1966.

The couple had two children: Kevin, in 1969, and Suzanne, in 1971.

Mr Mayall’s fascination with the sea extended to keeping salt-water aquariums, where he developed a way to breed seahorses in captivity.

He remained deeply linked with the East End community after the Sofar station left Bermuda, and turned his engineering skills to building and wiring the first model onion dropped at King’s Square for New Year’s Eve.

For a while, Mr Mayall ran a business installing the newly arrived cable TV, but switched to fishing full-time in his 23ft boat Dr Jazz.

He supplied restaurants and grocery stores with fish and lobster, especially Tom Moore’s Tavern and the Mid Ocean Club.

Another vessel, Atlantic Spray, offered tourism fishing charters out of Flatts Village, including one to Saudi royalty in which he earned his highest tip.

He forged tight friendships with East End fishermen, served on the Commercial Fisheries Council and advised the Government on fishing policy.

• Miles Beresford Mayall, an engineer who served as a seismologist for Bermuda, was born on September 22, 1939. He died on September 30, 2023, aged 84