Well I'm having a hard time coming up with any other explanation than
magic. Or maybe god had someone else make huge aquariums? Really, enlighten me.
Btw, I'll go ahead & drop this link before you do:
How did fish survive the Flood? - ChristianAnswers.Net
Please don't tell me the "fountains of the deep" or the firmament was salty, or that all the sea-life could instantly adapt.
The thing I posted pertains to the fountains of the deep, but It doesn't have to be "just that" there are other ways.
How did freshwater and
saltwater fish survive the
Flood?
How did saltwater fish survive dilution of the seawater with
freshwater, or how did freshwater types survive in saltwater?
And how did plants survive?
IF the whole Earth were covered by water in the Flood, then there
would have been a mixing of fresh and salt waters. Many of todays
fish species are specialized and do not survive in water of radically different
saltiness to their usual habitat. So how did they survive the Flood?
Note that the Bible tells us that only land-dwelling, air-breathing
animals and birds were on the Ark (Gen. 7:14, 15, 2123).
We do not know how salty the sea was before the Flood. The Flood
was initiated by the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep (Gen.
7:11). Whatever the fountains of the great deep were (see Chapter 9),
the Flood must have been associated with massive earth movements,
because of the weight of the water alone, which would have resulted in
great volcanic activity.
Volcanoes emit huge amounts of steam, and underwater lava creates
hot water/steam, which dissolves minerals, adding salt to the water.
190~Chapter 14
Furthermore, erosion accompanying
the movement of water off the
continents after the Flood would have
added salt to the oceans. In other
words, we would expect the pre-
Flood ocean waters to be less salty
than they were after the Flood.
The problem for fish coping with
saltiness is this: fish in fresh water
tend to absorb water, because the
saltiness of their body fluids draws in the water (by osmosis). Fish in
saltwater tend to lose water from their bodies because the surrounding
water is saltier than their body fluids.
Saltwater/freshwater adaptation
in fish today
Many of todays marine organisms, especially
estuarine and tidepool
species, are able to survive large changes in salinity. For example, starfish
will tolerate as low as 1618% of the normal concentration
of sea salt
indefinitely.
Barnacles can withstand
exposure to less than one-tenth the
usual salt concentration
of sea-water.
There are migratory species
of fish that travel between salt and fresh
water. For example, salmon, striped bass and Atlantic sturgeon spawn
in freshwater and mature in saltwater. Eels reproduce in saltwater and
grow to maturity in freshwater streams and lakes. So, many of todays
species of fish are able to adjust to both freshwater and saltwater.
There is also evidence of post-Flood specialization within a kind of
fish. For example, the Atlantic sturgeon is a migratory salt/freshwater
species but the Siberian sturgeon (a different species of the same kind)
lives only in freshwater.
Many families1 of fish contain both fresh and saltwater species. These
include the families of toadfish, garpike, bowfin, sturgeon, herring/
anchovy, salmon/trout/pike, catfish, clingfish, stickleback, scorpionfish,
and flatfish. Indeed, most of the families alive today have both fresh
and saltwater representatives. This suggests that the ability to tolerate
Eels, like many sea creatures, can move
between salt and fresh water.
1. Family is one of the main levels of classification for fish. In fish there is plenty of evidence
for hybridization within familiesthe trout/salmon family, for examplesuggesting that
families may represent the biblical kind in fish.
How did freshwater and saltwater fish survive the Flood?~191
large changes in salinity was present in most fish at the time of the Flood.
Specialization, through natural selection, may have resulted in the loss
of this ability in many species since then (see Chapter 1, pp. 910).
Hybrids of wild trout (freshwater) and farmed salmon (migratory
species) have been discovered in Scotland,2 suggesting that the
differences between freshwater and marine types may be quite minor.
Indeed, the differences in physiology seem to be largely differences in
degree rather than kind.
The kidneys of freshwater species excrete excess water (the urine
has low salt concentration) and those of marine species excrete excess
salt (the urine has high salt concentration). Saltwater sharks have high
concentrations of urea in the blood to retain water in the saltwater
environment whereas freshwater sharks have low concentrations of urea
to avoid accumulating water. When sawfish move from saltwater to
freshwater they increase their urine output twenty fold, and their blood
urea concentration decreases to less than one-third.
Major public aquariums use the ability of fish to adapt to water of
different salinity from their normal habitat to exhibit freshwater and
saltwater species together. The fish can adapt if the salinity is changed
slowly enough.
So, many fish species today have the capacity to adapt to both
fresh and salt water within their own lifetimes.
Aquatic air-breathing mammals
such as whales and dolphins
would
have been better placed than many fish to survive
the Flood, not being
dependent on clean water to obtain
their oxygen.
Many marine creatures would
have been killed in the Flood
because of the turbidity of the water,
changes in temperature,
etc. The
fossil record testifies
to the massive
destruction
of marine life, with
marine creatures accounting for
95% of the fossil record.3 Some,
Freshwater trout can hybridize with (saltwater)
salmon.
2. Charron, B., 1995. Escape to sterility for designer fish. New Scientist 146(1979):22.
3. There is a huge number of marine fossils. If they really formed in the manner claimed by
evolutionists (over hundreds of millions of years), then transitional fossils showing gradual
change from one kind to another should be most evident here. But they are conspicuous
by their absence. Furthermore, fossils of such things as jellyfish, starfish and clams are
found near the bottom of the fossil record of multi-cellular organisms, and yet they are
still around today, fundamentally unchanged.
Image by Marcus Österberg <sxc.hu>
192~Chapter 14
such as trilobites and ichthyosaurs, probably became extinct at that time.
This is consistent with the Bible account of the Flood beginning with
the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep (i.e. beginning in the
sea; the great deep means the oceans).
There is also a possibility that stable fresh and saltwater layers
developed and persisted
in some parts of the ocean. Freshwater can sit on
top of saltwater for extended periods of time. Turbulence may have been
sufficiently low at high latitudes for such layering to persist and allow
the survival of both freshwater and saltwater
species in those areas.
Survival of plants
Many terrestrial seeds can survive long periods of soaking in various
concentrations of saltwater.4 Indeed, saltwater impedes the germination
of some species so that the seed lasts better in saltwater than freshwater.
Other plants could have survived in floating vegetation masses, or on
pumice from the volcanic activity. Pieces of many plants are capable
of asexual sprouting.
Many plants could have survived as planned food stores on the Ark,
or accidental inclusions in such food stores. Many seeds have devices
for attaching themselves to animals, and some could have survived the
Flood by this means. Others could have survived in the stomachs of the
bloated, floating carcasses of dead herbivores.
The olive leaf brought back to Noah by the dove (Gen. 8:11) shows
that plants were regenerating well before Noah and company left the
Ark.
Conclusion
There are many simple, plausible explanations for how fresh and saltwater
fish and plants could have survived the Flood. There is no reason to
doubt the reality of the Flood as described in the Bible.
Recommended reading: John Woodmorappe, 1996, Noahs Ark: A
feasibility study, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, CA, USA.
4. Howe, G.F., 1968. Seed germination, sea water, and plant survival in the Great Flood.
Creation Research Quarterly 5:105112. Ironically, Charles Darwin similarly proved that
seeds could survive months of soaking in seawater.
