Why you really should have heard of ambergris

Tiffany O'Callaghan, CultureLab editor

MOLECULAR biologist Christopher Kemp had never heard of ambergris until one day, when he was living in New Zealand, a huge mound of what looked like "dirty week-old snow" washed ashore near Wellington. Crowds of people fell into a frenzy, hacking away at it with anything they had to hand.

The excitement, Kemp soon learned, was because the substance was believed to be a massive boulder of ambergris. This elusive compound, partly made from undigested squid beaks, originates in the guts of just 1 per cent of sperm whales. Ambergris has been used for centuries in perfumes, health remedies and even extravagant recipes. It sells for up to US$20 per gram. As it turned out, the lump on the beach was just a block of processed animal fat, but by then Kemp was already on a mission to find out more.

Floating Gold is the story of that endeavour. People who live near shores where ambergris occasionally washes up are aware of its value, but what happens when you make a find - and how you confirm it to be ambergris - is less well known.

Researching this book, which is equal parts historical review, scientific detective story and tale of adventure, had Kemp plodding along windswept beaches, picking up every dead bird, bit of rock and hard lump of faeces left by the tide. In his fascinating account he tells how he tracked down 90-year-old experts, confronted cagey perfumers and pursued tight-lipped ambergris hunters, until he discovered all there is to know about the substance.

Book information
Floating Gold: A natural (and unnatural) history of ambergris
by Christopher Kemp
University of Chicago Press
?14.50/$22.50

The sea change needed to protect the oceans

Bob Homes, contributor

HUMANITY has always treated the oceans as infinite - an inexhaustible source for fish and a limitless sink for waste. Marine biologist Callum Roberts aims to change that.

In Ocean of Life, he takes us on a comprehensive tour of the ways human activity is altering Earth's oceans - mostly for the worse - and outlines what we can do about it.

It is a depressing tale. Roberts shows how over the past few centuries we have fished out the seas, changed the climate, acidified the oceans and caused massive dead zones on the sea floor. We have polluted with plastic, chemicals and noise, spread diseases that devastate marine life and transported invasive species willy-nilly around the globe.

And worse is to come. If climate change continues unabated, we face a future of rising sea levels, likely loss of most coral reefs, and shifting currents - potentially including the end of the Gulf Stream, which helps keeps Europe unusually warm for its latitude.

After reciting this catalogue of ills, Roberts spends the second half of his book grappling with solutions. Here he professes a sense of optimism, because the way forward is clear. It requires more prudent management of fishing to restore collapsed fish populations, which, after a recovery period, may even lead to increased fish catches. Already marine protected areas have had great success in boosting the abundance of fish and the ecosystems that support them. Roberts's impassioned and convincing case for setting aside far more of the oceans in such protected areas is the strongest part of this section of the book.

We also need to utilise carbon capture, more renewable energy and possibly geoengineering to halt warming, while placing tighter controls on pollution - including agricultural run-off.

The bad news is that we have known all this for years, sometimes decades, and that hasn't helped much. Nor does Roberts offer any new strategies or game-changing technologies to reverse our failures. The good news is that what we must do is plain. All we need is the political and social will to do it. Anyone who reads this book will come away with more of that.

Book information
The Ocean of Life
by Callum Roberts
Allen Lane/Viking
?25/$30

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