Ambergris: the sperm whale concretion worth up to 50,000 dollars a kilo

In June 2021, Indian customs seized 181 kilos of a grey, waxy substance at Tuticorin, valued at several hundred million euros. It was neither a drug nor a precious metal. It was ambergris, a concretion produced in the intestines of a few sperm whales, and one of the most expensive raw materials in the world by weight.

A defence against squid beaks

The sperm whale feeds mainly on cephalopods, which it catches by the hundred during deep dives. Everything in a squid is digestible except the beak, a hard, sharp horny part.

In a small proportion of individuals, the digestive tract responds by coating these beaks in a secretion that protects the intestinal wall. The mass builds up, compacts, and is eventually expelled. Our page on what the sperm whale eats explains this diet.

The characteristic component of ambergris is ambrein, a triterpene alcohol which makes up 25 to 45% of it. Freshly expelled, the material is blackish, soft and frankly foul-smelling. It is the time spent at sea that transforms it: months or years of oxidation by air, salt and sun harden it, lighten it and give it its scent.

A quality piece of ambergris is therefore an aged object, pale, hard and light, which floats. That is why it is found on beaches and not inside the animals.

Why perfumery values it so highly

A perfume is a mixture of molecules that evaporate at different rates. The lightest make the first impression and vanish within minutes. Without a fixative, nothing would be left after an hour.

Ambergris performs this function better than almost any other material. It slows the evaporation of the whole composition, extends its lasting power by several hours, and adds in passing a scent of its own, warm, marine and animal, hard to describe and long judged inimitable.

It is this double property, technical and olfactory, that made its value. Historically it also featured in the pharmacopoeia and in luxury cooking, as a flavouring.

What it is actually worth

The figures vary a great deal with quality and colour, the whitest and most aged material being worth the most.

On the European market, a kilo commonly trades at between 20,000 and 30,000 euros. Fine pieces found on beaches regularly exceed 50,000 dollars a kilo, and exceptional blocks have reached several hundred thousand dollars in private sales.

The phrase “more expensive than gold” should therefore be handled with caution. It was accurate in certain historical periods and for the best grades; today gold is of the same order of magnitude, sometimes above. What remains true is that ambergris is among the most expensive natural materials in the world, and that its rarity is structural: it only forms in a minority of sperm whales.

Legal here, banned there

This is the most widely misunderstood point in the file, and it deserves to be set out clearly.

CITES treats naturally expelled ambergris as a waste product of the animal, and not as a product taken from it. On that basis it falls outside the restrictions of the convention. That is why its status depends entirely on national law.

In the United States, possession and sale are prohibited under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which protects the sperm whale with no exception for its products. Australia and India also prohibit the trade, hence the regular seizures on the Indian coast.

In the United Kingdom and in much of the European Union, by contrast, collecting and selling ambergris found on a beach remain lawful, as they do in New Zealand. The same object can therefore be a legal find on one side of a border and an offence on the other.

Did ambergris cost sperm whales their lives?

Indirectly, yes, but it was never the driver of the hunt. There was no way of knowing before killing an animal whether it carried any, and the great majority do not. What motivated the industry was spermaceti, present in every individual and in predictable quantity.

Ambergris was a bonus, an exceptional windfall that could pay for an entire voyage. It fed the legend of the sperm whale as much as its economy.

Today, perfumery relies overwhelmingly on synthetic substitutes, among them ambroxide, obtained from the sclareol of clary sage. The molecule reproduces the sought-after note without going through the animal, and its cost bears no comparison.

This page is part of our file on whale products, which presents the six main uses that motivated commercial whaling. See also our video “What is ambergris?”.