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Whale 'vomit' sparks cash bonanza!!

Did someone cry perfume?

In January of 2006 an Australian couple picked up an odd-looking fatty lump from a quiet beach and they are in line for a cash windfall.

Leon Wright and his wife took home a 14.75kg lump of ambergris, found in the innards of sperm whales and used in perfumes after it has been vomited up. Sought after because of its rarity, ambergris can float on the ocean for years before washing ashore. Worth up to $20 a gram, Mr Wright's find on a South Australian beach could net his family US$295,000 (£165,300).

At first, Mr Wright and his wife Loralee left the strange lump on the beach where it was found. However, two weeks later the couple returned to Streaky Bay and found it still lying there.

Floating gold?

Curious, Mrs Wright persuaded her husband to take it home.

"I immediately decided it was ambergris - it couldn't be anything else," Mr Jury told Australia's ABC radio.

Mythologised for thousands of years, ambergris has been referred to as "floating gold" by scientists and scavengers who long for a windfall amid the surf. Expelled from the abdomen of the giant sperm whale, often while hundreds of kilometres away from land, ambergris is a natural excrement thought to be used by the whale as a digestion aid. The hard beaks of giant squid, a main source of food for the whale, have often been found inside lumps of ambergris.

Initially, ambergris is a soft, foul-smelling waste matter that floats on the ocean.But years of exposure to the sun and the salt water of the ocean transform the waste into a smooth, exotic lump of compact rock that boasts a waxy feel and a sweet, alluring smell.

"It's quite remarkable when you think about it, because when the whale throws this out, it's discarded material that they can't digest," Mr Jury explained.

"[But] after 10 years, it's considered clean and all you're getting then is the wonderful musky, very sweet perfume, which I've got to say is ultra smooth - it's unbelievable."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4642722.stm

AMBERGRIS FACTS

Found in warm water oceans around the world

Bile secreted by sperm whales as a digestion aid

Solidifies and floats on water, sometimes for years

Used in perfumes, medicines, flavourings

Banned in US under endangered species legislation

Internet investigations failed to resolve the mysterious matter of the lump's identity, so the couple turned to local marine ecologist Ken Jury for help.

MORE FACTS HERE

http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/support/lib/seas/seasQA/QAs/a/ambergris.html

o_O

Learn somethin new everyday.

I guess barf from a sperm whale is better than sperm from a barf whale?

Here's a sperm whale in action as I recorded the process of ambergris being evacuated from the depths of the sperm whale's bowels, not unlike the way a cat vomits up it's hairballs...

Click the button for Sperm Whale entertainment.

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