A startling occurrence happened to Harry and Angelle Williams, a young married couple from Lancashire in England, while they were on vacation at sea along the Irish Sea coasts. Because it was April and too chilly to go swimming, they had just made travel plans for a short trip.
They wanted to relax, enjoy the starry sky, feel the sand between their toes, and hear the waves, but fate had other plans.
The two were enjoying a peaceful moment as they strolled along the beach, enjoying the lovely sand when an overpowering, repulsive smell interrupted their moment. The beach was so clear that they did not notice anything unusual despite the smell smelling like rotting fish.
The fragrance was so strong that the two began looking for its source. Harry eventually noticed a strange stone-like object, and as he approached the puzzling thing, he realised that it was the cause of the foul smell. When he first called Angelle, he told her to stop looking and go because it seemed to be nothing more than rotting trash.
Amber, a scarce substance found only in whales’ digestive systems, is used to create pricey fragrances. Amber emits a beautiful scent after being cleaned, dried, and given specific chemical treatments, despite having a foul smell when unprocessed.
Instead of reducing the speed at which complex perfume formulas evaporate, those who make fragrances use them to stabilise the aromas.
The only way for male sperm whales to get rid of the thick fluid they produce in their intestines is to vomit. The waves carry these “stones” onto the shore because they are less dense than water.
Long considered a costly product, amber is now far more expensive due to a regulation that rigorously forbids whaling. As much as gold, this substance is costly. This is due to the rarity of amber, which is only occasionally found drifting in the sea or being carried by the waves ashore.
Finding something unusual on the seashore was a lucky find for the two partners. He described the “boulder” and then put it on the scales to see how much it weighed and was worth. After some time, the expert made them an offer that the spouse was astonished to hear.
One and a half kilograms of amber were found. Harry and Angelle accepted the GBP 50,000 (approximately $71,000) offer. They claimed that while Harry would not have typically insisted on looking for the source of an offensive odour, his intuition proved correct in this case.
