King Ralph: Boy Finds What Could be $60,000 Chunk of Whale Vomit

As any collegiate frat boy can tell you, vomit isn’t all that hard to come by. However, getting your hands on $60,000 worth of regurgitated riches isn’t as easy as buying a case of Natty Ice and letting nature take its course.

Ambergris is a biliary secretion of sperm whales. Usually ambergris is expelled as fecal matter, but chunks as large as the one from this story are often vomited up by whales.

What makes ambergris so valuable is that it is a highly desirable fixative for perfumes. Most perfume manufactures have switched to synthetic ambergris in order to keep production up and prices down, but some of the most expensive perfumes in the world are exclusively made with ambergris.

Eight-year-old Charlie Naysmith from England found his chunk of ambergris while walking a long abeach on England’s south coast. What turned out to be ambergris seemed, at first, to be nothing more than a strange stone to Naysmith. The Daily Echo says that after a some research his family discovered what it really was.

NBC News reported that ambergris usually sells for $10-$50 a gram. Naysmith’s single piece of ambergris weighs in at around 600 grams – a significant cause for celebration. It is being reported that Naysmith’s chunk of Ambergris could bring in as much $63,000.

According to the Daily Echo, Charlie is considering using he money from the sale to build a house for animals.

Not a bad day at the beach.

Benjamin T. Lambright

I'm a poet and and author. I received my BA in Creative Writing from Central Michigan University and I am pursuing my MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. My work has appeared in The Greatest Lakes Review, The North Central Review, Dexter magazine, Open Palm Print, newspapers, magazines, bathroom stalls, the backs of highway billboards, under bridges and other, stranger, places.