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The Marine Technology Unit of the Spanish Research Council (UTM-CSIC) is responsible for the management of oceanographic research vessels. During the oceanographic cruises, a large amount of spatial data is acquired and managed by the UTM Data Service, from data that is automatically and continuously acquired in a trajectory, such as the temperature and salinity of the sea, to data that they are acquired in specific points or areas of study, such as a sound velocity profile in the water column or a bathymetry to map the seabed. The purpose of the UTM Data Service is to disclose what data exists and where, how and when it has been acquired and, in addition, to provide access to that data. For this, a national SDI is available, consisting of a Catalogue of Oceanographic Cruises carried out on ships that it has managed since 1991, with more than 500 cruises, and a Geoportal that allows the creation of maps combining layers. The UTM is a National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) of the Distributed European Sea Data Infrastructure SeaDataNet, to which it provides metadata (Cruise Summary Report -CSR- and Common Data Index -CDI-, ISO19139) and public data to be shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main software agent is the Eurofleets Automated Reporting System (EARS) which provides software and services for en-route data acquisition, records cruise and event metadata, and transforms this metadata into the necessary European and global marine data standards. The end goal is to let each RV operator have a 52°North Sensor Observation Service (SOS) installed on-shore as a central interoperability hub for acquisition data and event metadata. It is to be installed on the vessel, relies on TechSAS for data acquisition, and stores the metadata and data in the local EARS database, on the vessel. [Extracted from the article]