The Gulf of Mexico is Not a Sea

This thread has been opened in case Faith wants to pursue her position that the Gulf of Mexico is not a sea. She began promoting this idea in Message 1050 of the Did the Flood really happen? thread.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course ...

"Sea" is a rather vague term - is it not?
Sort of a synonym for "ocean?"In that case... all gulfs would be seas.
But not all seas would be gulfs.I suppose that, literally, I wouldn't say "the Gulf of Mexico is a sea" - but I would say "the Gulf of Mexico is part of the sea?"
However, standing at a beach in the Gulf of Mexico... I would equally say "This is the Gulf of Mexico!" or "This is the sea!"

From Wiki"
"The Gulf of Mexico (Spanish: Golfo de Mxico) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba."Bolding is mine.

DELETE Duplicate postEdited by 1.61803, : duplicate

Was the wrong post linked?Out of curiosity, I've read message #1050 and I don't see Faith saying the Gulf of Mexico isn't a sea, she seems to be saying the Gulf of Mexico wasn't a sea when the strata were laid down.Perhaps that's still an egregious error, but it's a different error.

She said the bottom of the Gulf is not sea floor. Message 1070

Thank you. Yes, I've been saying that it was land when the strata were deposited and then it sank.And I said later that it is not NOW sea floor because it sank after the strata of the geological column were in place, and the strata on the sea floors now are not the geological column.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It is the floor of a sea. If it ever was part of the geologic column, it is now. And deposition is adding to it.What is a sea:

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a : a great body of salt water that covers much of the earth
broadly : the waters of the earth as distinguished from the land and air
b : a body of salt water of second rank more or less landlocked
the Mediterranean sea

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(Merriam-Webster)

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The sea, the world ocean or simply the ocean is the connected body of salty water that covers over 70% of Earth's surface (361,132,000 square kilometres (139,434,000 sq mi), with a total volume of roughly 1,332,000,000 cubic kilometres (320,000,000 cu mi)).

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(Wikipedia)

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sea
1. the continuous body of salt water covering the greater part of the earth's surface; ocean
2.a large body of salt water wholly or partly enclosed by land: the Red Sea, Irish Sea

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(YourDictionary)

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1. one of the larger bodies of salt water, less than an ocean, found on the earth's surface; a body of salt water of second rank, generally forming part of, or connecting with, an ocean or a larger sea; as, the Mediterranean Sea; the Sea of Marmora; the North Sea; the Carribean Sea

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2. an inland body of water, esp. if large or if salt or brackish; as, the Caspian Sea; the Sea of Aral; sometimes, a small fresh-water lake; as, the Sea of Galilee

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3. the ocean; the whole body of the salt water which covers a large part of the globe

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(Webster)

And it wasn't eroded away, so it was and still IS part of the geological column.There is net deposition in the Gulf.The geological column is not over and done with.Time to dodge again?Like you have dodged the issue of Green River Formation -- Varves, Fossils, Time and Geological Columns

It formed in the Eocene period and is part of the geological column for that age in that area. It is adjacent to The Grand Canyon (the Green River is tributary to the Colorado River).

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Yet this formation is curiously absent from the Grand Canyon stratigraphy ... how do you explain this absence when chronologically it was laid down during the formation of the Grand Canyon stratigraphy?

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How do you explain the very thin varve layers, "mean thickness of a varve here is 0.18 mm," of alternating light and dark layers of very fine sediment (and we have talked about how long it takes to deposit very fine material from suspension in water)? There are over 6 million pairs of alternating light and dark layers ...

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How do you explain the different rock types that are part of the formation ... and particularly the layers of volcanic ash within/between the varve layers?

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How do you explain the layers of evaporite minerals within the varve layers?

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Note the correspondence of layer times with radiometric dates. How do you explain this?

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Note that the areas of deposition shifted over the time period of deposition in a way that corresponds with astrochronological dates. How do you explain this?

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This all left a "continuous record of six million years" of evolution in this area ... how did the fossils get sorted by radiometric age? How did the radiometric isotopes get sorted with depth in the formation?

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The overall deposition was so gentle (" ... The limestone matrix is so fine-grained that fossils include rare soft parts of complete insects and fallen leaves in spectacular detail ...") that these fossils were not torn up. How does this mesh with your model for the formation of the "geological column/time scale" in this area?

Answer these questions HEREIf you care.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : clrty

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And I said later that it is not NOW sea floor because it sank after the strata of the geological column were in place, and the strata on the sea floors now are not the geological column.

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Well you’re wrong about all of that.Obviously it is sea floor because the Gulf of Mexico is a sea. Nothing else is needed.Obviously the strata are part of the geological column because they exist.And, for, your information the rifting that formed the Gulf of Mexico started in the late Triassic, so obviously even the Jurassic strata are later than that.

Maybe this will be clearer: It looks from the cross sections like the strata in the Gulf, which are not measured any deeper than the Jurassic level, are the same strata as are found on the continents, whereas in the oceans we don't find those strata, as I understand it. If you think we do then fine, that can be part of the argument. But my understand has been that the strata in the oceans are not the same strata. But since those in the Gulf do seem to be the same strata I supposed that they had formed on the land and that the Gulf itself formed after they were all laid down, which seems to be the case with a lot of phenomena. In that sense it is not part of the oceans, even though now it might be right to call it a sea or part of the oceans. It's just not the same sea that was there during the laying down of the strata.

And it's part of "the" geologic column and is being added to.

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But since those in the Gulf do seem to be the same strata I supposed that they had formed on the land and that the Gulf itself formed after they were all laid down, which seems to be the case with a lot of phenomena.

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Since the evidence shows that many strata did not form on land that is a rather poor piece of reasoning. And there is a big difference between something seeming to be the case and you desperately wanting it to be the case, no matter what the evidence shows.

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In that sense it is not part of the oceans, even though now it might be right to call it a sea or part of the oceans.

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It is obviously right to call it a sea since it is a large expanse of salt water connected to the ocean. Your weird ideas about the origins of the strata underneath it are completely irrelevant.

Sea in geography: a body of water adjacent to or connected to ocean.If too far away from ocean, then it is called lake.
Sea in geology: area covered by ocean water or modified ocean water.
Sea should be described by other qualifier, such as shallow sea, deep sea, open sea, closed sea, etc. In some cases, the described sea are synonymous to ocean.