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Message to Mom

During a 2009 Arctic expedition aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, science writer Helen Fields (left) and technician Megan Bernhardt from the University of Washington arranged a Mother’s Day salute using cold-weather protective gear. “We would like to thank our moms for raising us right; that is, to be the kind of people who think spending five and a half weeks on a ship in the Bering Sea sounds like the adventure of a lifetime,” Fields wrote in a corresponding Polar Discovery journal entry. The primary focus of the cruise, one of five during the International Polar Year (IPY), was to investigate the effects of climate change on sea ice and the Arctic ecosystem. The National Science Foundation, which supported U.S. IPY research, celebrated its 64th year on May 10, 2014.(Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)