First of all, let us not pretend many people know what ambergris is! In fact, if you saw ambergris on the beach, you might give the waxy grey substance a wide berth.

Kick it away ashore thinking its just another curious ocean stones and shells.

Well, sperm whales, just like the one that washed to Kwale beach eject an intestinal slurry called ambergris into the ocean, where the substance hardens as it bobs along.

Eventually it gets collected along shores—most often as sheer happenstance, as in the case of eight-year-old Charlie Naysmith in Britain in 2012 Charlie Naysmith thought he had simply found an interesting rock on the beach, but it turned out he had a piece of ambergris, also known as whale vomit, worth $63,000 (Sh 6.7 million).

Ambergris is a gross, an excretion from the digestive tract of whales that sometimes washes up on shore.

Designer perfumer houses use it to make expensive, lasting fragrances, and some cigarette manufacturers still use it to flavour cigarettes