Floating Gold by Christopher Kemp

Author:Christopher Kemp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

The whale that washed ashore on Manpuriya beach had looked lean and sickly. Scientists from Sri Lanka’s National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency told reporters from the Daily Mirror that the whale had weighed an estimated 10 tonnes. An adult male sperm whale measuring 15 metres in length should weigh closer to 35 tonnes. This specimen was underweight. From the 1823 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “It is observed, that all those whales in whose bowels ambergris is found, seem not only torpid and sick, but are also constantly leaner than others; so that, if we may judge from the constant union of these two circumstances, it would seem that a larger collection of ambergris in the belly of the whale is a source of disease, and probably sometimes the cause of its death.”

During the whaling era, whalers knew as much without having to refer to a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The intestines of underweight sickly-looking whales always required a careful and thorough inspection. A single boulder of high-quality ambergris could be worth more than all the barrels of whale oil collected during the long months spent at sea.

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