Janet Warburton is a Project Manager for the PolarTREC program at the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS). Ms. Warburton has managed the education programs at ARCUS since 2000 and in that time has helped send dozens of teachers on research expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. She was very happy to be able to join this expedition to experience life as a PolarTREC participant and a member of the research team. Ms. Warburton has lived and worked across the state of Alaska and now lives outside of Fairbanks with her young family and a menagerie of animals. Any spare time she has is devoted to sleeping, playing with her children, or playing in the great outdoors.

Jacqueline Grebmeier is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee. Over the last 20 years, her arctic field research program has focused on such topics as understanding biological productivity in arctic waters and sediments and documenting longer-term trends in ecosystem health of arctic continental shelves, including studying the importance of bottom dwelling organisms to higher levels of the arctic food web, such as walrus, gray whale, and diving sea ducks. Dr. Grebmeier has coordinated and participated in numerous international research projects and has been heavily involved in the U.S. planning efforts for the International Polar Year. Dr. Grebmeier has been involved with numerous teacher experience and education programs in the Arctic, including hosting TREC teachers in 2004 and 2006.

The team traveled on the USCGC Healy in the Bering Sea, which lies to the west of Alaska and the east of Russia. The Healy sampled the biologically diverse waters between St. Lawrence Island and St. Matthew Island with a secondary study area located between St. Lawrence Island and Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait.