{"id":639350,"date":"2026-04-29T23:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/639350\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T23:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:30:14","slug":"rare-discovery-of-ambergris-on-denmark-beach-excites-scientists-and-historians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/639350\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare discovery of ambergris on Denmark beach excites scientists and historians"},"content":{"rendered":"

An extremely rare ingredient used in high-end perfume has washed up on a tourist beach on WA’s south coast.<\/p>\n

The solid waxy material \u2014 known as ambergris \u2014 is essentially sperm whale vomit or faeces.<\/p>\n

It’s a highly prized ingredient in the world’s most expensive perfumes that takes decades, sometimes centuries, to produce.<\/p>\n

An exciting find<\/p>\n

Keen fisher Ryan Clarke came upon the rare find on Ocean Beach in Denmark, 415 kilometres south-east of Perth.<\/p>\n

At first, the rockmelon-sized chunk looked like a “plain rock”.<\/p>\n

“But when I actually touched it, it felt completely different from the rock, and I knew exactly what it was at the time,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"ambergris<\/p>\n

One of the ways to test if it is ambergris is to see if it floats. (Supplied\/Ryan Clarke)<\/p>\n

“It was hard like a rock surface, but also waxy and very sort of subtle and light to touch, like it was almost weighed like you think a feather would.<\/p>\n

“Definitely not what a rock would weigh.”<\/p>\n

Mr Clarke said he tried to keep a lid on his excitement until he could be sure.<\/p>\n

“We did some tests and holy hell, it was ambergris,” he said.<\/p>\n

Musky, earthy smell<\/p>\n

First, he and his wife dropped it into a bucket of water and discovered that, like ambergris, it floated.<\/p>\n

Then, they touched its surface with a hot needle, which melted and ejected a “little tarry substance” that quickly solidified and released a “really sweet, musky, oceany, earthy sort of smell in the air”.<\/p>\n

Mr Clarke said they reported their find to the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions of Western Australia, as required by law, before deciding “really quickly” to share it with the community.<\/p>\n

“It’s such a special find that we didn’t want to keep it locked in the drawer somewhere, and the community needs to see it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It really is a treasure.”<\/p>\n

What is ambergris?<\/p>\n

Marine biologist Pia Markovic said sperm whales mainly eat squid, but squid beaks don’t break down in the whale’s stomach.<\/p>\n

To protect the animal from the hard beaks as they pass through, its insides are lined with a waxy substance.<\/p>\n

\"Mother<\/p>\n

Mother and baby sperm whale swimming. (Wikimedia: Gabriel Barathieu)<\/p>\n

The whale eventually secretes this foul-smelling substance \u2014 “whether that comes back out through their mouth or out as faeces” \u2014 and over decades, it is slowly cured by the ocean as it floats on the surface.<\/p>\n

Why is it used in perfume?<\/p>\n

Some pieces float for hundreds of years, with the scent further refining over time.<\/p>\n

It’s this quality that made it a premium ingredient in perfume in the 1700s, Ms Markovic said, when whalers would harvest about 5 per cent of their catch for the substance.<\/p>\n

“It was used in very expensive perfumes for a very long time,” Ms Markovic said.<\/p>\n

A synthetic version has replaced it as a fixative in almost all perfumes today.<\/p>\n

\"Marine<\/p>\n

Pia Markovic says the ambergris can come out as vomit or faeces. (ABC News: Jon Kerr)<\/p>\n

Ambergris is so rare that Ms Markovic knows of only two recorded finds in WA history.<\/p>\n

The piece has been offered to the Museum of the Great Southern, where regional manager Catherine Salmaggi, who has been at the museum for 18 years, said she had never seen anything like it.<\/p>\n

“This couldn’t get any better, really,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Salmaggi said the museum would love to house the rare piece but was in talks with the Western Australian Museum to determine its final resting place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An extremely rare ingredient used in high-end perfume has washed up on a tourist beach on WA’s south…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[309580,64,63,309581,240452,105,138009],"class_list":["post-639350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ambergris","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-museum-of-the-great-southern","tag-sperm-whale","tag-technology","tag-wa-museum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}