Thai bartender finds thousands of dollars in rare whale “poop,” an expensive perfume ingredient

KOI SAMUI, Thailand—When thinking of ways to spend $500,000, petrified sperm whale intestinal fluid is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. However, a Thai bar owner, who had kept a block of hardened whale substance, commonly referred to as ambergris, at his home for more than a year is reportedly planning his retirement when the value of the find was estimated. There’s at least one troubling element to this story, but it’s hard to tell which is worse: the fact ambergris hunters are rabid to find sperm whale intestinal matter or that it is a common ingredient in perfume. Either way, it proves excrement can be a lucrative business. Boonyos Tala-upara, a 44-year-old gentleman from Thailand, found the ambergris when he was strolling along a beach on Koh Samui Island. According to Tala-upara, had a golden cast with a waxy texture, which is one of the ways to identify ambergris. Tala-upara’s find weighed somewhere around 22 pounds – a very large amount of the rare whale Stumbling upon ambergris, which is known to have a musky smell, is the equivalent of striking gold in the ocean. The intestinal fluid of whales is used to make various perfumes last longer. While some...