Aquatic organisms could have survived the Flood (Talk.Origins)

Claim CH541:


 * Present-day fish and other aquatic organisms could have survived the Flood. Many freshwater fish can survive in salt water, and many saltwater fish can tolerate fresh water. The floodwaters may have been layered by salinity, allowing others to find their preferred habitat.

Source: Woodmorappe, John, 1996. Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study. Santee, CA: Institute for Creation Research, pp. 140-152.

CreationWiki response:

Talk Origins' wording of the claim is a gross over simplification. Talk Origins reduces an entire chapter down to two sentences, and in doing so they misrepresent what Woodmorappe was saying.

Talk Origins totally ignores such factors as post-Flood adaptation, which Woodmorappe does deal with. The descendants of the aquatic life that survived the Flood have adapted to the post-Flood world and many varieties would be more sensitive than their pre-Flood ancestors.

It should also be noted that lab experiments show that freshwater and saltwater may remain separate enough to allow the survival of their inhabitants for about four weeks.

Smith and Hagberg, "Survival Of Freshwater And Saltwater Organisms In A Heterogeneous Flood Model Experiment" CRSQ Volume 21, Number 1 Jun 1984.

In most Flood models the turbulence that stirred up the sediments would not occupy every cubic inch of the Flood water during every moment of the Flood, so there would be areas where layering could occur.

This type of mixing would only occur during the run off, and then only in the water actually draining into the oceans as opposed to that being left in inland depressions.

The key word here is species, not kind. Those species having such narrow ranges are post-Flood adaptations. Their pre-Flood ancestors were probably a lot more tolerant.

While this is true, none of them are as problematic as Talk Origins suggests.

WRONG! This is based on a misunderstanding of one or more models. Even for those that do produce large amounts of heat, the problem can be dealt with.

This assumes that all the limestone deposits formed during the Flood were by chemical deposition. However much pre-flood limestone would have been eroded and redeposited as normal sediment, thus no heat problem. Also TO completely omits the fact that we are still trying to understand the nature of lime stone production. According to Friedma, "Hypotheses relating to the origin of lime mud (limestone or carbonate rocks) have been discussed for more than a century." His work at the Bahama Banks shows that we do not truly understand how the bulk of lime stone is formed.

Friedman GM. 1994. Great Bahama Bank aragonitic muds: mostly inorganically precipitated, mostly exported — discussion. Journal of Sedimentary Research A64:921.

Rather than dismissing the problem of heat from volcanic activity he successfully explains it. Under water lava forms a shell that slows its cooling. Furthermore, once covered with sediment, heat would go into the sediment and not the water.

The impacts in question would occur in water and still-soft sediment, and this would dramatically reduce the heat produced. Much of the heat that is produced would go into the rocks, not the water.

This is based on several assumptions.


 * The sulfuric acid produced by the Flood's volcanic activity was of the same concentration as modern volcanic activity. This may not be the case. The removal of magma during the Flood would have caused mixing, possibly increasing the concentrations still in the Earth.
 * The sulfuric acid got evenly distributed around the world.
 * All of the sulfuric acid released entered the water and was not buried by sediment.

If any of these are inaccurate then the argument is invalid. The possibility that caves were carved by sulfuric acid suggests that much of it was buried and did not get into the Flood water.

Morton's arguments concerning a lethal amount of X killing off marine life have been proven fallacious before. For example his argument concerning mercury is riddled with assumptions and errors.

Mercury and the Genesis Flood: A response to Morton, Proceedings of the First Conference on Creation Geology, by Dr. Aaron Hutchison

The flaw in this argument is that the situation even in present day oceans is more complex than this. As they moved along they would intersect other currents, picking up nutrients that would get to the invertebrates.

Did any one at Talk Origins even read Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study? Woodmorappe answers this and Talk Origins ignores his answer.

Most fish can survive the change both ways if the change is gradual enough. The rain during the Food lasted 40 days so any increase in pressure at a given point would be gradual enough. Additionally, not all fish of any type would be affected by such changes. Finally, the fact that it would be a problem for some present-day fish that have adapted to these depths does not mean that their pre-flood ancestors had the same problem.

Actually such a pattern fits the Flood model quite well. The Biblical kind can extend beyond genus to family, and this changes the pattern significantly. However, those genera that survived the Flood would be the least likely to be buried particularly in lower deposits, since they would be able swim above the deposits. In this case the pattern would be based on how well a given genus could survive the Flood. So even in the Flood model the fossil order in question would be an order of death and even extinction.