Creation Science Rebuttals
Creation Magazine
How Old is Australia's Great Barrier Reef?
Volume 8, Issue 1, November 1985
Review by Greg Neyman
© Old Earth Ministries
In this magazine article, YEC writers Peter Reed and Andrew Snelling present an argument that the Great Barrier Reef could only be 3,700 years old. This article appeared in the November 1985 issue of Creation Magazine. I am writing this review in February 2014, because Creation Ministries International used this article as their daily article on their website, on 15 February. Nothing like YEC's using the latest research to base their claims on! But of course, for YEC theorists, this is not unusual.
The article tells about 1980's research, which showed that a section of the Pandora Reef (the Great Barrier Reef is made up of more than 2,900 individual reefs) grows at a rate of 15.3mm/year. Extrapolating this rate, and looking at the entire thickness of Pandora Reef (10 meters), the authors claim that it would have only taken 660 years for this reef to grow. They then take this and apply it to thicker reefs, up to 180 feet thick, and claim that they would be less than 3,700 years old. This puts their formation about 500-600 years after the YEC flood of Noah, which many YEC's say occurred about 4,200 years ago. So right after the supposed YEC ice age after the Flood, the reef started growing. Looks like a nice fit for YEC theory.
However, this is an overly simplistic approach to understanding coral growth. True, corals do grow at the rates mentioned. However, there are many other factors to consider when looking at the history of a coral reef. For example, we must factor in tectonic plate movement, uplift, sea level change, and climate to get an accurate picture of reef history. We must also look at evidences for previous coral reefs that are now dead, as these must be accounted for in any YEC theory.
A simple check of Wikipedia reveals a more complete picture. Here is an excerpt:
The Reef Research Centre, a Cooperative Research Centre, has found coral 'skeleton' deposits that date back half a million years.[23] The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) considers the earliest evidence of complete reef structures to have been 600,000 years ago.[24] According to the GBRMPA, the current, living reef structure is believed to have begun growing on the older platform about 20,000 years ago.[24] The Australian Institute of Marine Science agrees, placing the beginning of the growth of the current reef at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum. At around that time, sea level was 120 metres (390 ft) lower than it is today.[22]
From 20,000 years ago until 6,000 years ago, sea level rose steadily. As it rose, the corals could then grow higher on the hills of the coastal plain. By around 13,000 years ago the sea level was only 60 metres (200 ft) lower than the present day, and corals began to grow around the hills of the coastal plain, which were, by then, continental islands. As the sea level rose further still, most of the continental islands were submerged. The corals could then overgrow the hills, to form the present cays and reefs. Sea level here has not risen significantly in the last 6,000 years.[22] The CRC Reef Research Centre estimates the age of the present, living reef structure at 6,000 to 8,000 years old.
For references, see Wikipedia. While the current living reef structure is in the ballpark age for YEC, this living reef is built upon much older reef structures, that date back at least 600,000 years. The Creation Magazine article completely ignores these dead reefs, probably because they don't have an explanation for how they would fit into the pre-Flood era, which only lasted about 2,000 years.
One final thought...what about the YEC model of catastrophic plate tectonics? Would the old coral reefs have survived this drastic reshaping of the earth's surface?
This article is on the web at http://creation.com/age-great-barrier-reef
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