CPT Q. 042: Why do we not see more sediment in the ocean basins from runoff from the Flood?

Q. 42. Please further explain why we do not see more sedimentary deposits in ocean basins, especially given the massive amount of runoff that occurred at the end of the Flood.

Response: The essence of the answer is that, generally speaking, water speed is inversely related to water depth. That is, high speed flow in shallow water turns into low speed flow when the water becomes deep. (I realize that some people have difficulty grasping this idea. But computational models such as the one I used to model the response of the ocean water to flipping of the earth’s spin axis show this effect in a striking way, namely, of high speeds on the continent where the water is shallow but of extremely low speeds beyond the continent edge.) This means that water on the continent which is racing toward the coast slows down dramatically when it encounters deeper water offshore. Water’s ability to keep its sediment load in suspension depends very strongly on its speed. When the water speed becomes low, it has almost no ability to carry sediment, and the sediment falls out of suspension. This implies that, at least in a general sense, deep water represents a severe barrier to sediment transport.

In regard to where sediments resulting from the Flood runoff reside today, there are indeed huge thicknesses of these sediments on the continental shelves. This is not surprising, in light of my comments above about the effects of increasing water depth, since a significant increase in water depth would have existed on the continental shelves during the Flood, resulting in a reduction of water speed and a dropping of the sediment load before the runoff water reached the edge of the continental shelf.