BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Whale 'vomit' sparks cash bonanza: An Australian couple who picked up an odd-looking fatty lump from a quiet beach 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."
4 comments:
You're thinking of "A Cold Bargain" in Uncle Scrooge 17, wherein Scrooge buys a ball of the world's rarest element, bombastium, at auction for "one trillion dollars and six kitchen sinks". At one point in the story, en route to the South Pole, the ball of bombastium (about the size of a grapefruit)falls overboard and into the blowhole of a passing sperm whale.
Art Scott
Thanks, Art. I had a feeling you'd know which one I was thinking of.
I suppose getting ambergris from sperm whale vomit is better than the way people used to get it - catch a sperm whale, kill it and look in the guts. Makes it more progfitable to find too.
Everything I know about ambergris is from one of Donald J. Sobol's "Encyclopedia Brown" stories. Then again, everything I know about anything is from an "Encyclopedia Brown" story.
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