Anyone Confused About the Old Races in Wind Waker?

[NMG]

I looked over wind waker and was wondering Hyrule is under water some how the gorons survived and the zoras didn't. Lets see the gorons are made of rock and would of drowned but they are still around. The zoras live on in and under the water and they died out. Dose anyone else see something wrong with this?

 

[Djinn]

Gorons drowning is a strange thing. Until TP we were led to believe that they drown easily since they cannot swim. But in TP we have one walking around in Zora'a domain easily enough and apparently not needing to breathe at all. I still suppose that a Goron living on the Great Sea would still have a lot of challenges. They might be a little too heavy for any small boat, at least for any long voyages. And they would sink like a rock (literally) if they ever fell into the ocean. In fact any that fall in might just sink all the way to the bottom and to Old Hyrule. However they are found in the direct sequels Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. So they did survive to settle in New Hyrule with Link and Tetra. They are just not common at all in the immediate old Hyrule area of the Great Sea. With the loss of Death Mountain to Valoo and the Rito they most likely just moved off to some other island that Link never happened to visit in WW.

The Zora disappearance has been mentioned in a couple other threads fairly recently

http://zeldadungeon.net/forum/showthread.php?15518-Zora-Rito
It is genuinely accepted that the modern Rito are the remnant of the Zoras. Since OoT Zora's Domain was very close to Death Mountain it makes sense that it would be the mountain they scale to survive the great flood.

 

[Mechanical Gun]

Zoras didn't die, they just evolved into the Rito