alainaflute
Greg
Jody
E.G.D.Have you heard the one about… Floating Gold?
Posted by Jody on February 4, 2013
Ambergris (photo by Peter Kaminski from Wikimedia Commons)
We’ve made some wonderful acquaintances here at Beach Treasures and Treasure Beaches. Recently, one of our favorite blogging friends, Wingclipped, at The Coastal Path shared a link with us that was quite intriguing! It seems that a Mr. Ken Wilman and his curious canine companion Madge were walking along a Lancashire beach in the North of England one day when they happened across a very smelly beach treasure on the sand. After a bit of google searching, Mr. Wilman discovered that their rock-like “floating gold” might be worth over $136,000 USD!
Wingclipped sent along this video link (which sadly refuses to be dis-embedded from the Sky News website, and therefore can not be directly posted here. Go ahead and click the link below to see the video!).
http://news.sky.com/story/1045585/whale-vomit-worth-100000-found-on-dog-walk
FYI: What Ken and Madge actually found is a lump of ambergris. According to Merriam-Webster.com ambergris is “a waxy substance found floating in or on the shores of tropical waters, believed to originate in the intestines of the sperm whale, and used in perfumery as a fixative.”
Score one (a really big one) for beachcombers everywhere!
~ Sending along very special thanks to Wingclipped for sharing such a fun beachcombing story. You too can follow the family travels and antics of Wingclipped, his lovely wife, and their energetic twins as they explore the coast of Britain on foot at his blog The Coastal Path. His most recent entry is entitled “40d – Entering Dungeness” (Britain’s only desert and “Europe’s largest stretch of shingle landscape”). This week’s post comes complete with a heartwarming twist!
~~~
Wingclipped said
Thank you for your kind words! I was listening to Radio 4 the other day where an expert was talking about it. He said that ambergris is rare due to the decline in sperm whale numbers. Further, not all sperm whales will necessarily produce it. He said it is a coating produced in the whales’ stomachs to protect them from the sharp beaks of the squid they feed on. Finally, he said that more often than not it was not vomited out of the whale (as has been widely reported) but is actually pooped out. Whether or not that is an important distinction I do not know, but facts should be reported correctly I always think…
Jody said
Right you are! Thanks so much for the update.
kiwiskan said
I always keep an eye out for that on the beach. Found some when I was a kid but too young to realise what it was and left it there
Jody said
How exciting! I’ve never heard of ambergris before (that I can recall). Growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan, we didn’t find anything so grand!
adinparadise said
What an interesting and amazing find. 🙂
Jody said
Isn’t it? I had no idea!
tootonesbored said
…read the instructions carefully my beach-combing compatriots… my good friend Dee is in the habit of dragging “ambergris” back to the beach house for closer inspection… only to find that it is not what she hoped, but something just as disgusting and equally as smelly…. twice it has been lumps of animal fat and what the other stuff was, we will never know (thank god) but can now identify at a distance and avoid!….
Happy hunting!
Jody said
Yikes! 🙂
tootonesbored said
…exactly… all that is pungent is not ambergris!
Rolling Harbour said
I’m mighty pleased to learn which end of the whale this stuff emerges from… “O! the difference to me”, as Wordsworth elegantly put it.
Jody said
Yes, but the price is the same from any which way! 🙂
nutsfortreasure said
we love gold in all forms lol
Jody said
Me too! 🙂
nutsfortreasure said
🙂