...or even ambergris - a rare and valuable substance produced by whales and used in the perfume industry...
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That is some weird stuff. Produced in the GI tract of whales, apparently to coat foreign objects so they don’t do damage. Then the whales either barf it up or die and decay and the globs of it float to the surface and wash up on beaches. It then gets collected for making perfume. At full strength it smells nasty but highly diluted in alcohol it has a distinctive and very pleasing sweet smell. There is such a thing as synthetic ambergris but the best (and priciest) perfumes and colognes use the real thing.
AmbergrisConnect how to identify ambergris
After WWI thousands of tons of munitions were dumped in the north sea off of Germany. Some of the phosphorous shells have been degrading and the phosphorus has been washing ashore. People find it in the surf and thinking it is valuable ambergris, pick it up and it ignites and they get burned.