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Every year, river (7) and other sources (9) dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year. (8,9) As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today’s input and output rates. (9) This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, 3 billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations which are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years. (9) Calculations (10) for many other sea water elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

(7) Maybeck, M., ‘Concentrations des eaux fluviales en elements majeurs et apports en solution aux oceans’, Rev. de Geol. Dyn. Geogr. Phys. 21 (1979) 215.

(8) Sayles, F.L. and P.C. Mangelsdorf, ‘Cation-exchange characteristics of Amazon River suspended sediment and its reaction with seawater’, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 41 (1979) 767.

(9) Austin, S.A. and D.R. Humphreys, ‘The sea’s missing salt: a dilemma for evolutionists’, Proc. 2nd Internat. Conf. on Creationism, Vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship (1991) in press. Address, ref. 12.

(10) Austin, S.A., ‘Evolution: the oceans say no!’ ICR Impact No. 8 (Oct. 1973) Institute for Creation Research, address in ref. 21.