Ocean salinity

Ocean salinity is the measure of sodium chloride, or salt, present in the ocean. Earth is the only planet in the universe we know has liquid water. The ocean is necessary for life on Earth to exist, but not for the purpose of drinkable liquid. The ocean's saltiness keeps it from being used as a source of drinking water, and instead allows us to use the ocean for valuable minerals and other resources. The ocean and ocean salinity is also a great source of scientific knowledge, and debate. Evolutionists believe in and support the theory of evolution, a process which requires millions of years. Since the process requires such a vast amount of time and occurs in the ocean itself, evolutionists need to find evidence that ocean is at least a few billion years old to make their theory plausible. Creationists on the other hand, propose the theory of a young Earth, which would be necessary to support Biblical creation. Although Creationists and Evolutionists' theories both rely heavily on the age of the Earth, they require very different calculations.

Since scientists can measure ocean salinity, and the rate at which ocean salinity increases, they can calculate the maximum age of the ocean. These calculations can provide evidence for or against Creation or evolution. At this point in time, scientists have concluded that the ocean is relatively young, and so, does not support the evolutionary theory. However, a young ocean does support the Creation view of a young Earth, created by an all powerful God. Although, ocean salinity in general supports Creation, or more specifically, the intelligent design aspect of Creation. The process through which marine species filter out salt from the ocean suggests an intelligent design, because without this process, fish would not be able to hydrate and would die off. However, examples such as this also give evolutionists reason to believe that ocean salinity forced species like fish to evolve in order to survive in the salt water. Neither of these theories can be proved through ocean salinity, but the age of the ocean remains unwavering in support of Creation.

Young Earth


For years, scientists have explored the possibility of using ocean salinity levels to calculate the age of the ocean, and therefore, the earth. Several factors such as volcanic dust, weathered clay minerals, salt outcrops, and sea groundwater discharge bring sodium, or salt, into the ocean, so the salinity increases steadily. While salt steadily enters the ocean, it seldom leaves, so the rate at which salt enters the ocean is much higher. With the rate at which salt enters and leaves the ocean, partnered with the amount of salt already in the ocean, we can calculate a maximum age for the ocean: 80-90 million years. Although this method may not provide scientists with a definite age, the maximum age provided by this calculation can disprove many theories, and has. Since evolutionists claim that life evolved in the ocean, a process that took several billion years, the maximum age is far too young.

For the evolutionary theory, which claims that life evolved in the ocean, to be true, the maximum age of the ocean would have to be at least three billion years old. However, since the age of the ocean is nowhere near what would have been required for life to evolve, evolutionists argue against this method. Several scientists did analyze figures from secular geoscience sources to find the quantity of salt in the ocean and its input and output rates. Secular science knows that if the input rate is slower and the output rate of salt is faster, then the ocean may be as old as evolution requires. However, even the secular geoscience sources provided a slower output rate of salt, which would make the earth much younger than necessary for the evolution of life.

The salinity of the ocean is evidence that not only disproves evolution, but affirms creation. The maximum age of the ocean not only points to intelligent design that did not require billions of years of evolution, but also to the reliability of the Bible. As it is right now, the maximum age of the ocean is consistent with the Biblical age of 6,000 years. However, even the process of calculating the maximum age of the ocean is full of estimations and assumptions about the beginning and constant rates. So truthfully, scientists can never fully prove the age of the ocean with the information they have, but this calculation provides hope for further evidence of creation in the scientific community.

Microbial Evolution


As scientists maintain the ability to measure ocean salinity, they also keep salinity histories of the different oceans. These records allow scientists to recall the salinity levels and average temperature of any particular ocean from a certain year. Evolutionists use the salinity history of the ocean to support, and in some ways prove, microbial evolution. Both the temperature and salinity history of the ocean are environmental factors relevant to the course of microbial evolution in the Precambrian. The estimated initial salinity of the ocean, from the evolutionary view, was two to three times more than modern levels. Marine life at this time, millions and millions of years ago, was limited to microbes and cyanobacteria that could survive in the hot, saline young ocean. Oxygen solubility decreases as ocean temperature and salinity increases, so the Archean ocean was supposedly anoxic and inhabited dominantly by anaerobic microbes. Evolutionists use all of these factors to support the growth and evolution of microbes. However, these conditions alone cannot determine the evolution of microbes. Also, the records scientists have access to do not help prove that the ocean was ever that hot or saline; the increasing pattern has allowed evolutionists, however, to estimate their own increasing and decreasing salinity pattern, based solely on the fact that salinity levels continually increase now.

Although evolutionists claim that salinity history supports evolution, the fact remains that no actual evidence comes from any data throughout the collected salinity history to support any of these claims, simply an estimated pattern. Microbes may have been able to survive in such a hot and saline ocean, they can also survive now, and scientists have witnessed no such change in their biological structure that would suggest survival in such drastically different conditions, like the hot and saline young ocean evolutionists propose.

Marine Survival


Several processes filter salt into the ocean while few filter salt out, which is why the salinity levels steadily increase rather than remain neutral. Although most of these processes filter salt into the ocean from outside sources, many scientists believe that salt remains in the ocean because of natural processes that occur in the marine environment itself. The processes that enable fish to survive in the salty ocean water continuously filter salt back into the water. Since fish cannot survive on salt water, their kidneys filter out the salt in order to keep the fish hydrated. So even though fish drink more than their weight in water every day, their bodies naturally filter the salt from that water right back into the ocean. The same goes for sharks and bony fish as well. Bony fish constantly lose water due to the salt levels in the ocean, so they must drink gallons and gallons of water in order to survive. In turn, their kidneys again filter salt out of the body and back into the ocean. Even sharks cannot survive on saltwater alone, although they don't lose water like bony fish. Sharks have as high a level of chemical urea in their bodies as the ocean has salt, which allows them to absorb saltwater without becoming dehydrated. However, a gland in in the shark's digestive system still filters out the excess salt right back into the ocean.

These processes happen every hour in the ocean: fish drink water and remove some of the salt, but then they filter it right back into the ocean so they can survive. Years ago, scientists considered the process of fish drinking water as a process of removing salt from the ocean, but now they have found that is not so; instead, fish release just as much salt back into the ocean as they absorb, because they cannot survive by drinking saltwater.

Video
NASA video on the importance and necessity of salt in the ocean EqpJZGyS4Bw