We're not very well-equipped to handle volunteers right now, but we are releasing more data and open source software every day, and would be happy to see contributions from the community.
We have a GitHub for the institution (https://github.com/whoigit/) and some individual labs have separate GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab accounts. For instance, some of the robotics code behind the AUV Sentry is here: https://bitbucket.org/whoidsl/
You would need to add some insurance in that volunteering plan. Doing field work in the ocean is hard and dangerous. For they would be a risk to be sued.
... And the ship job is not so glamourous as you think.
Oceanography is fantastic, I enjoyed it a lot, but people shouldn't build a wrong image in their mind. This is hard work.
