Passionate about land and water, Deanna Wheeler is inspired to make sure that 'no child is left inside'. Hands on, real science is her priority. From hatching, raising, and releasing yellow perch and horseshoe crabs to participating in a pilot sturgeon project, her students discover how connected they are to the world around them. Ms. Wheeler’s love of learning and the outdoors meld together in her professional and personal life. She is dedicated as a teacher and as a citizen to better understand and protect the environment for positive impacts on individuals, the community, and the health of our environment. Ms. Wheeler cherishes time spent with her family, exploring, camping, kayaking, reading, and just having fun, and she looks forward to trading places with the tundra swans that winter near her house in Maryland to spend time in the Arctic on a PolarTREC expedition. Ms. Wheeler's particpation in PolarTREC is supported in part by the North Pacific Research Board.

Lee Cooper of the University of Maryland is the chief scientist on the first of two science cruises that will take place aboard the USCGC Healy in the Bering Sea in 2009. Dr. Cooper organizes the science mission and coordinates the work of approximately 35 other scientists studying sea ice, walrus distributions, sea floor processes, biological communities, water chemistry, and marine mammal and bird observations. Dr. Cooper works at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland. His research specialty is biogeochemistry and he presently studies biological changes in the northern Bering Sea. Dr. Cooper is working with a PolarTREC teacher to share Bering Sea research with the public and K-12 classrooms.

The team will be travelling on the icebreaker USCGC Healy to a sampling area in the northern Bering Sea. The Bering Sea lies to the west of Alaska and to the east of Russia. The team will depart from Kodiak Island, Alaska, and return to the port of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, which is in the Aleutian Islands.