The National Oceanographic Data Centre: A National Disciplinary Data Centre and its Services
The NODC is one of the national environmental data centres operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the US Department of Commerce, which manages the world's largest collection of publicly available oceanographic data. According to its charter, the centre 'serves to acquire, process, preserve, and disseminate oceanographic data'.
Its primary mission is 'to ensure that global oceanographic data sets collected at great cost are maintained in a permanent archive that is easily accessible to the world scientific community and to other researchers'. In fulfilling its mission it collaborates closely with other national and international organizations such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), and the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) dedicated to open access data.
Source: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/about/overview.html