I’m not going to leap into my Bible, but Noah sent out several doves in calm seas searching for land, did he not?
Yes, I believe the narrative says exactly that.
If the ark had been hurled by a gargantuan tsunami, Noah may have found the top of Mt. Ararat as the water subsided, and beached it there.
The last bird he sent out was a dove, and it returned to him with an olive branch in its beak. Still a symbol of peace in our culture.
The last time he let the dove out, it did not return.
Noah sent out a Raven first, which never did come back, then sent out the same dove once a week for a few weeks until it didn’t come back, an indicator that livable habitats were beginning to reemerge.
The ark had already come to rest somewhere high on Ararat at a time when other mountaintops were still not visible. The sea was, as you say, apparently calm, and it took several weeks for the other mountaintops to become visible, so apparently the mechanism for depositing all that water could not have been as transitory as tsunamis or tidal behavior, so I must retract my earlier statement. The water that was there must have been relatively uniform in global distribution.
The foregoing does not, however, eliminate the possibility that exceptional tectonic relationships might have displaced vast quantities of both surface and subterranean water, and that is closer to how the Biblical text describes it than my brief excursion into “big wave” theory. My apologies.
He sent a raven (perching bird) that went to and fro til the earth was dry. He sent a dove (ground bird) and she found no where to land, so she came back. He sent her again, she had found an olive branch. He sent her again, and she did not need to come back.