I’m reading Moby Dick right now (very tough read...). Still don’t understand why the founder of Starbucks Coffee named it after Starbuck. I would have named it Stubbs Coffee!
Ambergris is not whale vomit. It comes out of the other end. Sperm whales swallow sharp things like squid beaks. (Yep, squid have beaks.) Some of them secrete a waxy substance to protect their innards from being torn by sharp items like the beaks. Some produce massive lumps weighting hundreds of pounds (sperm whales are large). A whale pooping ambergris is a very sick and probably a dying whale. The lump of ambergris floats off into the ocean and breaks up into smaller pieces in the water. Ambergris, being wax, floats. Some of it lands up on beaches. Fresh ambergris smells pretty awful, a goatish, animal smell, at least in my experience. Think barnyard. Ambergris aged for awhile in the ocean or on a beach smells just like English Leather cologne. The more it has aged, the greater its value, but only up to a point. Currently, ambergris value is $10-20 a gram. Perfume-makers use it. Yes, there is artificial ambergris, but many perfume manufacturers are purists and want the real thing. (I got interested in ambergris and did some research on it because I found some lumps on the beach, like the man in the story.)