Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris

Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris

Christopher Kemp

Language: English

Pages: 232

ISBN: 0226430367

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


“Preternaturally hardened whale dung” is not the first image that comes to mind when we think of perfume, otherwise a symbol of glamour and allure. But the key ingredient that makes the sophisticated scent linger on the skin is precisely this bizarre digestive by-product—ambergris. Despite being one of the world’s most expensive substances (its value is nearly that of gold and has at times in history been triple it), ambergris is also one of the world’s least known. But with this unusual and highly alluring book, Christopher Kemp promises to change that by uncovering the unique history of ambergris.

A rare secretion produced only by sperm whales, which have a fondness for squid but an inability to digest their beaks, ambergris is expelled at sea and floats on ocean currents for years, slowly transforming, before it sometimes washes ashore looking like a nondescript waxy pebble. It can appear almost anywhere but is found so rarely, it might as well appear nowhere. Kemp’s journey begins with an encounter on a New Zealand beach with a giant lump of faux ambergris—determined after much excitement to nothing more exotic than lard—that inspires a comprehensive quest to seek out ambergris and its story. He takes us from the wild, rocky New Zealand coastline to Stewart Island, a remote, windswept island in the southern seas, to Boston and Cape Cod, and back again. Along the way, he tracks down the secretive collectors and traders who populate the clandestine modern-day ambergris trade.

Floating Gold is an entertaining and lively history that covers not only these precious gray lumps and those who covet them, but presents a highly informative account of the natural history of whales, squid, ocean ecology, and even a history of the perfume industry. Kemp’s obsessive curiosity is infectious, and eager readers will feel as though they have stumbled upon a precious bounty of this intriguing substance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

car, I still stop every few steps to prod another random object with my driftwood. And as I do so, I wonder how to gain that experience for myself — the experience that so few people have — to be able to identify ambergris. A few days earlier, I had read another description of ambergris in The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses. Author Chandler Burr recounted a conversation with fragrance chemist Luca Turin, who described a journey made by Guy

about a thousand dollars.” And then, without warning, the winds changed direction again. The seas were calmer. I ask Vodanovich if he will be on the beach again later that day, to sort through the kelp and other flotsam on the shore. “No,” he replies. “The winds are wrong. And we’ve sort of milked this beach pretty good.” John Vodanovich’s knowledge of the local beaches, and of the tidal and seasonal changes that take place on them, meant he knew precisely when to look for ambergris and

which means ambergris is produced by only 3,500 sperm whales, scattered throughout the world’s oceans. This explains its rarity — its singularity. Curved like a parrot’s beak, the squid beaks pass from the stomach, chafing and irritating the delicate intestinal lining on the way. As a growing mass, they are pushed farther along the intestines and become a tangled indigestible solid, saturated with faeces, which begins to obstruct the rectum. It acts as a dam. Faeces build up behind it. The

“It was just about that big,” he says, “and I took it down and I washed my hands with it. It was made in New Bedford in 1835 by Zenas Whittimore. It’s this big block of this hideous-looking stuff. It looked like that. But, boy, was it nice. Nice soap. Smelled like soap, worked just like soap. It actually says it right on there: Whittimore. It’s stamped on the soap itself.” He places the box of whale oil soap to one side, looks up with a grimace at the shelving in front of us, and scratches his

where we began. My pockets are filled with moon snail shells and a few long straight jackknife clams. I’m holding the white spindle of a whelk, like a central spoke, which is all that remains after the sea has eroded its Baroque rounded outer spirals. I climb into my rental car, relieved to be out of the cold. Although I have failed, now on the shores of two oceans, to find my own ambergris, I have finally seen plenty of it. There are traces of ambergris everywhere I have been in coastal New

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