Turkish Authorities Seize More Than 10 Million Lira Worth of 'Whale Vomit'

Police in Turkey’s Mersin province said on February 14 they had seized approximately 10 million lira ($733,000) worth of ambergris, describing the substance as “whale vomit”.

Police said ambergris is used in the cosmetics industry and that this shipment had been smuggled into the country. They said almost 43kg of the substance had been seized.

Footage posted by police showed one person being taken away in a police vehicle. The person was later “released by the order of the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office”, according to an online translation of the police statement.

Ambergris is mentioned in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, along with a Turkish connection.

“The Turks use it in cooking,” Melville wrote, “and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St Peter’s in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it. Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is.”

Ambergris is described by the Smithsonian Institute as “the rarest and most enigmatic whale product. An opaque, waxy substance from a sperm whale’s intestines, it was found occasionally in the stomachs of whales being processed on whale ships. More commonly, it was found floating on the surface of the world’s oceans or washed up on the shore in pieces that could weigh several hundred pounds. It was used by western cultures as a fixative to prolong the scent of perfumes into the later 20th century.” Credit: Mersin Police via Storyful