Author: Zhang Weicheng
Source: Knowledge is Power magazine
According to the British "Daily Mail" report,
A Thai fisherman was very lucky
Found by the sea
a wax block of whale vomit, identified,
This wax block is a popular raw material in the perfume industry
"Ambergris",
Worth up to £210,000,
About 1.86 million RMB.
20-year-old Chalermchai mahapan was fishing in the Samira Sea in southern Songkara province when the weather suddenly changed so much that he pulled ashore early and soon spotted the 7-kilogram wax block.
At first he thought it was just an ordinary stone, but on closer inspection it didn't seem so simple, so Chalermchai brought the mysterious object home, and later he sent the sample to the laboratory for examination, and the experimenter confirmed that it was ambergris.
Chalermchai said, "I feel really lucky to find it by the sea. The young fisherman is now selling the ambergris for 100,000 baht (about 21,599 yuan) per kilogram. He said: "I am not in a hurry to sell, the agent will help me find a suitable international buyer." ”
What is this "ambergris" that is so valuable! How did it come into being? What kind of fragrance is it, and why do perfume merchants regard it as a treasure?
The mystery of the origin of ambergris
For the perfume industry, ambergris is an indescribable treasure, people have favored this thing for nearly a thousand years, but they are confused by the accurate description of its smell, they say that ambergris complex smell like the best tobacco, old church wood, tides, sandalwood, fresh earth, seaweed in the sun, Brazil nuts, and so on. For a long time, ambergris has been used by people to make perfumes, incense, condiments and aphrodisiacs, and has also been known as "gray gold" and "floating gold", etc. These metaphors are not exaggerated, because ambergris is indeed very expensive, once comparable to gold.
Ambergris in nature is unassuming, mostly grayish-white, mottled, irregularly shaped, and emits indescribable smells. They are always discovered in this unexpected way, but when they are deliberately searched, they are difficult to find, so for thousands of years, the mystery of ambergris has been circulated by people.
Where does ambergris come from? How are their scents formed? This has always been a mystery. It is now known that ambergris first formed as a sperm whale swimming in the deep sea, and it began as a solid mass of squid and excrement in the belly of the sperm whale that had not yet been fully digested. Squid is a favorite food for sperm whales. In 1993, some cetaceanists studied 17 dead sperm whales, and they found 40 species and about 29,000 squid remains in the stomachs of those sperm whales.
In the digestive system of sperm whales, the vast majority of squid is broken down, but their beak-like mouthparts, eyeballs, and hard internal organs are difficult to digest. Sperm whales have a long digestive process and their stomachs are always filled with undigested residue. It was previously believed that because these residues would gradually become a solid clump, so every day or two, sperm whales would vomit them into the sea, and these clumps that entered the sea under the years of soaking in the sea underwent a series of wonderful chemical reactions, which formed the precious ambergris. This explanation seems reasonable, but is it really the case?
Marvellous sea travel
In 2006, oceanographer Robert Clarke reinterpreted the process of ambergris production in a paper called "The Origins of Ambergris." The scientist described that the incompletely digested residue with the squid mouthparts entered the intestine and became a solid wrapped in feces, which sometimes squeezed the inner wall of the intestine, and the feces was blocked by it, so that the gastrointestinal system could only absorb more water, and the solid had to shrink in size to allow the feces behind to pass through. In this way, the residue becomes smoother and firmer, and the process is repeated over and over again, and the residue continues to add new secretion envelopes and become larger and larger. In fact, Clark says, this process is rare in sperm whales, and only one in every hundred sperm whales does this, which explains why ambergris is so rare.
Next, this mass of matter must enter the sea. Many times, it is successfully excreted by sperm whales, but sometimes, it also tightly blocks the intestines, so that the sperm whale has to discharge it into the sea at a heavy cost that causes the intestines to rupture. But in any case, once this mass of matter enters the sea, its sea journey to form ambergris officially begins.
By this time, the mass was already the prototype of ambergris, it was a black and sticky mass, less dense than the sea, so it was carried around by the current, sometimes it was undulating on the surface of the tropical storm-ravaged sea, sometimes rolling up and down in the waves of large swirls, a process that would last for decades or even hundreds of years.
Finally it became a baby
In this way, ambergris slowly matures in the sea like a fine wine fermentation, it is oxidized by the seawater, degraded by the sun, eroded by the waves, until it is finally washed on a beach waiting to be discovered. At this point, the long and wonderful ocean journey of ambergris is over, but no one can predict which beach the ambergris will be washed by the sea.
At this time, the ambergris is very different from when it first entered the sea, and the degree of difference is determined by time. In general, it becomes grayish and has less water content, making it smoother and firmer. Its outer layer has hardened and looks like a gray stone. It has a lot of black mottled substance inside, that is, the squid mouthpiece embedded in ambergris. Ambergris varies in size, with the largest weighing up to a ton.
Mature ambergris exudes a complex and wonderful atmosphere. For perfume merchants, its value depends roughly on two aspects, one is the ability to act as an aroma fixative, it should be able to properly "lock" the fragrance on the skin, so that the fragrance can only be slowly released, thereby continuing the time of fragrance; the second is of course its fragrance. Commenting on ambergris perfume, American perfume merchant Mandy Aftel said, "Its breath should be beautiful, pleasant, as if with the color of amber, with rich connotations, but in addition, it has to be some kind of subversive, imaginative, you can imagine that it has a glorious effect on some characteristics." ”
Such a wonderful fragrance naturally attracts the attention of scientists, and a fascinating question is what substance is emitted by the fragrance of ambergris? In 1820, French chemists Pierrejoseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé caventou first tried to study ambergris in scientific experiments, having previously isolated the antimalarial drug quinine from cinchona bark, and now they have set their sights on ambergris.
The mysterious source of the fragrance
The research was complex and meticulous, they weighed, measured, estimated the density, tested the boiling point, and as a result, they obtained a white crystal, which they speculated was the most effective ingredient in ambergris, so they named it "amberriin".
Curiously, however, ambergris does not smell at all, and in order to find out, chemists continue to break it down, all the way down to the subtlest level until the secret is solved. Finally, scientists finally understood that ambergris essence exposed to air is oxidized or photodegraded to form a mixture rich in aromatic components, and the composition of this mixture is very complex, one of which is called dihydro-gammaionone, which emits a strong tobacco smell; the other is called the derivative ofbutanal, which smells like seawater; the third is called α-ambergris octachronyl alcohol (alpha - ambrinol), the residue of old animals and excrement, and the fourth is called naphthofuran, also known as ambergris oxide, which is the most unique ingredient of ambergris and the almost indescribable ingredient of ambergris. The magical scent of ambergris is emitted by a mixture of these aromatic ingredients.
Note: News text and picture sources China Youth Network, China Youth Daily, Guangzhou Daily