Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
July 25, 2003
Poop or vomit? That is the question. I’m referring to ambergris, the waxy substance produced in the digestive tract of sperm whales.
Because a column I wrote about ambergris comes up on Internet searches, I get a surprising number of e-mails about this substance.
In my 1996 ambergris column, I wrote that sperm whales pass the material in their feces. A reader recently wrote: “I thought ambergris is not actually whale poop, but throw-up — even more lovely to think of. The whales eat cuttlefish, their body forms a coating around it and they spew it up.”
My most reliable whale book states that sperm whales produce ambergris in the lower intestine around indigestible squid beaks. I don’t know any animals that can vomit material from their lower intestine. Substances in that part of the digestive tract are destined for the other end.
People have found a wide range of uses for this intestinal tumor called ambergris. Around 1000 A.D., the Chinese referred to ambergris as “lung sien hiang,” which means “dragon spittle perfume.” This name came from the belief that ambergris originated from dragons drooling on shoreline rocks. In some places in China, people still sell the substance as an aphrodisiac and a spice for food and wine.
The ancient Japanese also prized ambergris and apparently knew where it came from. They called it “kunsurano fuu,” meaning “whale droppings,” and used it to fix flower fragrances in perfumes. (Fixing a scent means to keep it from evaporating.)
Arabs called ambergris “anbar” and thought it was good medicine for the heart and brain. They believed the substance oozed from springs near the ocean. In “A Thousand and One Nights,” the shipwrecked Sinbad finds a stream of stinky ambergris flowing like wax into the sea. A giant fish swallows the stuff and vomits it up in fragrant lumps.
Ancient Greeks thought that if you smelled ambergris before drinking wine, it enhanced the effect of the alcohol. Sometimes they added a pinch of ambergris to the wine itself.
People in the West had their own ideas about ambergris production. They theorized it was the sperm of fish or whales, arrived in sea bird droppings or was made by bees in hives by the sea.
Marco Polo was the first to write that ambergris came from sperm whales, a fact he learned from island people in the Indian Ocean who hunted sperm whales. The native whalers thought ambergris was something the whales ate at the bottom of the ocean and later vomited.
By the late 18th century, ambergris was valuable in the manufacture of perfumes and became yet another reason to kill sperm whales. Today, to protect the species, various marine mammal protection laws ban trade in ambergris.
Because sperm whales occasionally pass by Hawaii and ambergris floats, I live in hope that one day I will find a chunk of this strange stuff on the beach. If that happens, it will be one of the few times in my life I’ll happily carry home a piece of poop.
Lovely to think of.