If you’re really lucky, you’ll find a chunk of whale shit on the beach. But it’s a certain kind of whale shit.
Looking for whale poop is a surprisingly worthwhile endeavor. Need proof? Look no further than the 8-year-old kid that found a piece weighing just over a pound that was valued at $63,000. For some reason, everyone called it whale puke as his find made the rounds on the internet. But it’s not! It’s shit! Sort of, anyway. And recently, a couple in the UK found another piece… an even bigger one.
The poop-like substance is actually ambergris, which is used by perfume manufacturers to prolong the scent of their product. And it really, really rare. “Ambergris is definitely not vomit,” said Christopher Kemp to CNN. Kemp, is probably the only man on earth who wrote an entire book about sperm whale shit. “It’s more like poop, and it comes from the same place as poop, but it’s only made by a small percentage of sperm whales, as a result of indigestion.”
Although it’s still not confirmed that what Gary and Angela Williams found is actually ambergris, if it proves to be genuine, it’ll be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $70,000. According to reports, they’re negotiating with a buyer in France and New Zealand already. The couple was walking on a beach near Morecambe Bay in England when they smelled something. Following the stench–which, if you think about it, isn’t something many people would do–they came across a large lump of (hopefully) ambergris. Kemp describes the smell as “a mixture of dung and the ocean, and old wood, and tobacco, and moist earth, and ozone.” He’s like a sommelier, only for whale excretions.
Often called “floating gold”, ambergris can float around for years before it makes its way to shore, and even then, the chances of not only finding it, but knowing what you’ve found, are exceedingly small. Still though, if you’re on the beach, there’s no harm in keeping an eye out.
And here is a video of a whale taking a dump.
