Assessing ocean changes without data centers?

Dear colleagues among water column oceanographers, How may we know that the ocean has or has not changed on the half-century time scale, if data points through time from in-situ measurements are not available because we, the observing scientists, did not and still often do not deposit our observations in data centers? Time series of species occurrence and abundance, by the way, will have to prepare for species shifts, which must be established with veracity. [...]voucher specimens need to be deposited in permanent (on century scale) facilities, cataloged, and curated—an expensive, worldwide task. [...]data centers may require additional support for processing submitted observations.