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Ocean Discovery Centerworking name · Planning phase, home

Science & Conservation

Accurate, careful, and kind to the places it describes.

How the center would get the science right, use data and media fairly, treat live animals, and plan for sustainability without overclaiming.

Accuracy

House rules for every exhibit and page.

  • Link every figure to its source

    Mapping and species counts change every year. Every figure links to its source, and the Research page lists each source's date (or says it is undated).

  • Name the method

    Say whether a depth was measured by sonar, predicted from satellites, filled in by computer, or seen by a camera.

  • Keep the ranges

    Where science gives a range or sources differ, say so (for example, that estimates of total species vary widely) instead of giving one precise-looking number.

  • Attribute in the text

    “According to NOAA”, not “scientists say”.

  • Never invent

    No invented observations, species records, footage or discoveries. “Possibly undescribed” is not “new species”.

  • Not for navigation

    Every bathymetry product names its data source and says it is not for navigation. GEBCO's terms require the credit and say its grid must not be used for navigation; we add the warning everywhere.Source: GEBCO, Terms of use for the GEBCO Grid (undated)

Built on the Ocean Literacy PrinciplesSource: NMEA, Ocean Literacy: The Essential Principles (Version 3, 2020)

  1. The Earth has one big ocean with many features.
  2. The ocean and life in the ocean shape the features of Earth.
  3. The ocean is a major influence on weather and climate.
  4. The ocean made Earth habitable.
  5. The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems.
  6. The ocean and humans are inextricably interconnected.
  7. The ocean is largely unexplored.

Phrases we avoid, and what we say instead

“95% of the ocean is unexplored.”
As of April 2026, 28.7 percent of the global seafloor had been mapped in high resolution with modern sonar.Source: Seabed 2030, Global seabed mapping reaches new milestone as five million square kilometres added in a year (20 April 2026)Source: NOAA, How much of the ocean has been explored? (April 2026) People have directly seen, with cameras, robots or crewed submersibles, less than 0.001 percent of the deep seafloor, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island.Source: NOAA, How much of the ocean has been explored? (April 2026)Source: Bell et al. 2025, How little we've seen: A visual coverage estimate of the deep seafloor (7 May 2025)
“We know more about Mars than our ocean floor.”
Satellites map the seafloor only coarsely because water blocks the tools used to map other worlds from orbit.Source: NOAA, Seafloor Mapping (explainer) (undated)
“The ocean makes 70% of the oxygen we breathe.”
The ocean produces at least half of Earth's oxygen, and marine life uses roughly the same amount.Source: NOAA, How much oxygen comes from the ocean? (undated)
“The ocean is turning acidic.”
Average surface-ocean pH has dropped by about 0.1 units since the Industrial Revolution, about a 30 percent increase in acidity. Seawater is still basic, not acidic.Source: NOAA, A primer on pH (undated)

Data and media

Credit everyone, license everything.

Every image, clip and dataset would be logged with its source, license, credit line and permitted uses before it is shown.

Live animals

An aquarium only if every gate is met. Otherwise, no.

The center is planned to be complete without live animals. Deep-sea animals are unsuitable for a center like this one: many do not survive being brought up, and the few aquariums that display them, such as Monterey Bay Aquarium, depend on specialized collection and life-support systems.Source: MBA, Taking seawater to the extreme (undated)Source: Shillito 2015, Long-term maintenance and public exhibition of deep-sea hydrothermal fauna: the AbyssBox project (2015)Source: Churaumi, Deep-sea fish exhibition (paper) (undated)

Accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums can only be sought once a facility is regularly open, and its standards require welfare assessments, alarms and backups.Source: AZA 1, Accreditation FAQs (undated)Source: AZA 2, The Accreditation Standards & Related Policies, 2026 edition (2026)

Pennsylvania prohibits many invasive species. It lists all live crayfish, native or not, as prohibited: possessing, importing, transporting, introducing, buying or selling them is unlawful, with narrow exceptions (for example bait used where it was caught, or scientific use with escape controls and documentation). Anything else needs the Fish and Boat Commission's prior written approval.Source: Pa. Code 1, 58 Pa. Code § 71a.11. Prohibited species (effective 1 January 2024)Source: Pa. Code 2, 58 Pa. Code Chapter 63 (§ 63.46, sale, purchase or barter of injurious species) (amended effective 1 January 2024)Source: PFBC, Aquatic invasive species and prohibited species (undated) Since 1 January 2026 Pennsylvania has required fish-health certificates for fish imported into the state or stocked in its waters; how that applies to a closed display system would need the Commission's written confirmation.Source: PFBC, Fish health certificate requirements (effective 1 January 2026) The City of Bethlehem's industrial waste ordinance (Article 923) regulates non-domestic discharges to the sewer and can require an Industrial Waste Discharge Permit; whether a saltwater system's discharges would need one is a question for the City's pretreatment program.Source: City, Codified Ordinances, Article 923: Disposal and Discharge of Industrial Waste (undated)

Water quality and biosecurity

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums' standards call for a regular water-quality program, with written records of results and chemical additions, and an alarm on every tank that holds fish or aquatic invertebrates in case life support fails.Source: AZA 1, The Accreditation Standards & Related Policies, 2026 edition (2026)Source: AZA 2, The Accreditation Standards & Related Policies, 2024 edition (copy in a US Fish and Wildlife Service docket) (2024) The Virginia Aquarium, for example, runs its own lab that tests its animal habitats for salinity, pH, alkalinity, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, among other measures.Source: Virginia Aquarium, Water Quality Lab (undated) No authoritative target ranges for public aquariums were found, so they would be set for each species and system by a life-support engineer and an aquatic veterinarian.

Quarantine also means keeping things in. Guidance from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says quarantine facilities should not release animals, any pathogens they carry, or any organisms in their transport water. The World Organisation for Animal Health says treating the water a facility releases protects the environment.Source: FAO, Procedures for the quarantine of live aquatic animals: a manual (Fisheries Technical Paper 502), chapter 1: Introduction (2008)Source: WOAH, Aquatic Animal Health Code, Chapter 4.4 (disinfection) (2024) The Fish and Boat Commission says it is illegal to release into the wild any species not native to Pennsylvania, and releasing a fish species that is not on its own list of allowed species into the state's waters needs the written permission of its Executive Director.Source: PFBC 1, Apply for a permit for amphibian and reptile educator possession (undated)Source: PFBC 2, Fishing Summary (Pennsylvania fishing laws and regulations) (2026 edition) State rules treat a fish-breeding system as “closed” only if it is indoors, recycles all its water in normal use and never drains to the state's waters. Whether that test applies to a display aquarium that does not breed animals is unknown.Source: Pa. Code, 58 Pa. Code § 71a.4 (closed systems) (current through November 2024)

Learning from live animals without owning them is possible: Pennsylvania's Trout in the Classroom program, stream sampling with watershed groups, and outreach from accredited aquariums.Source: PA TIC, Program fact sheet (16 December 2025)

Hard gates (all must be met)

  1. Binding commitment to Association of Zoos and Aquariums standards, with accreditation sought once open
  2. Alarms on every tank, tested backups, and a written water-quality program with targets for each species set by a life-support engineer and an aquatic veterinarian
  3. An aquatic veterinarian with 24/7 emergency cover; written quarantine and isolation procedures, in systems that do not share water with exhibits
  4. No animal, plant, pathogen or untreated water ever released to local waters; used water treated as the City's pretreatment program requires
  5. A written animal-welfare program in place before any animal arrives
  6. Emergency plans, annual drills and engineered backup power
  7. Ethical sourcing only: aquacultured, captive-bred, in-house cultured, propagated with legal documentation, or transfers and rescues from accredited institutions; no wild capture of rare or deep-sea animals, or of species listed under CITES, the treaty that controls international wildlife trade
  8. Excluded: deep-sea animals and marine mammals (always); birds and other mammals (at least in any first aquarium stage); and prohibited, injurious or protected species
  9. Written clearances from the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission, the Department of Agriculture and the City of Bethlehem's industrial pretreatment program
  10. An independent cost study and committed multi-year funding for animal care

Cautionary cases include a new aquarium that went bankrupt in 2002 under its debt, and a 2024 closure that followed a 2019 state wildlife-license suspension and years of animal-welfare concerns.Source: GlobeSt, Colorado's Ocean Journey sinks under debt (29 March 2002)Source: Bond Buyer, Fish on the menu as Ocean Journey is bought by Houston restaurant chain (2003)Source: CPR, Interactive aquarium SeaQuest Littleton to close (28 January 2024)Source: Denver7, SeaQuest Littleton to close after years of citations, injuries to visitors and animals (January 2024)

Sustainability

Use less. Claim only what is true.