Multimillion-Dollar Whale Vomit Plot Foiled by Police

A huge bounty of ambergris—often called "whale vomit"—that was seized from smugglers in India has been found to be worth several million dollars.

Local authorities acquired the smuggled ambergris near the coast of Tamil Nadu, a state in South India. Around 22 pounds of ambergris was being smuggled, according to The Hindu, although India Today reported that the haul weighed just under 40 pounds. This past Saturday, authorities acted on a tip and intercepted a vehicle containing several people and the smuggled ambergris.

Ambergris is a valuable waxy substance that forms—in very rare cases—in the digestive system of sperm whales. It is also worth a great deal of money.

"Ambergris is very expensive and costs around 1.5 to 2 crore rupees [$181,154 to $241,531] per kilogram [2.2 pounds]," Seema Latkar, the district police superintendent for the city of Mysuru, said at a Tuesday press conference, according to The Hindu.

This would place the ambergris bounty's value at somewhere between $1.7 million and $2.36 million but possibly as high as over $4 million.

Ambergris' value comes from its scarcity, as it is found in only about 5 percent of whales. Sperm whales were once hunted in huge numbers, in part to harvest their ambergris, which was used in perfume manufacturing and for its apparently aphrodisiacal properties. In 1953, one male whale was found to contain a 420-kilogram (926-pound) boulder of ambergris.

Between 184,000 and 236,000 sperm whales were killed in the 1800s, with at least 770,000 killed in the mid-20th century before the 1986 moratorium on whaling. This decimated their populations from over a million worldwide before whaling began to only around 360,000 in the 1990s.

Now, despite whaling being banned in most countries, many prohibit trade in ambergris, even if it is harvested from the ocean surface. Trading ambergris is illegal in Australia under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1999, in the U.S. under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and in India under the Wild Life (Protection) Act of 1972.

Ambergris can occasionally be found floating on the surface of the ocean, leading to its historical nickname "floating gold," according to the U.K.'s Natural History Museum (NHM).

Exactly how the ambergris gets from the whale's innards to the ocean surface is not known. Many experts believe that whales regurgitate it, hence the name whale vomit. Others think they release it from the other end of their digestive tract.

"Based upon recent discussion with colleagues around the world, I lean towards the theory that ambergris forms in the intestines and passes along with fecal matter, forming an obstruction in the rectum," Richard Sabin, curator of marine mammals at the NHM, said in a museum blog post.

Over the past two years, India's Directorate of Revenue Intelligence has seized nearly 100 pounds of ambergris that was being smuggled out of the country, according to India Today. The smugglers were arrested, the magazine's report said.

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