All’s Whale That Ends Whale

GRIP: Research Assistant at the University of Auckland in New Zealand

Cover image: Waiheke Island

I made my own bespoke fragrance in Auckland, and it smells like a sperm whale’s vomit. After many rounds of blind-testing over 70 different scents, I chose a base note that was sweet, musky, powdery, and particularly marine, thinking it to be a perfect souvenir for a summer spent in the South Pacific. It wasn’t until after I pumped fifteen drops of this scent into my beaker that the perfumer revealed I had decided to build my fragrance around a mysterious substance called ambergris.

Produced in the digestive systems of sperm whales, ambergris is initially fecal in texture and foul in smell as it drifts around in the middle of the ocean. When regurgitated, it often contains the hard, unpalatable beaks of squids: in other words, ambergris is the unexpected, uncomfortable product of consuming something unfamiliar.

When I first arrived in Auckland, everything was intimidating: the retrograde seasons throwing me into an apathetic winter, the endless hills adorned with massive flights of steep stairs, and the frequent integration of Māori words and phrases into both daily speech and formal correspondence. Even the contents of my research project on the ancient Mediterranean were foreign. In fact, the first two weeks of my program focused entirely on unlearning what I thought I already knew about this area of ancient history. My supervisors, who are at the cutting edge of their field, extensively debunked the false, modern constructs of distinct ancient “Greek” and “Roman” cultures, as well as contemporary understandings of geopolitical boundaries that had been inappropriately applied to an ancient region much more interconnected than traditional scholarship previously revealed.

Admittedly, I found it difficult to digest the sudden novelty of everything. In an attempt to process all that I had been exposed to as quickly as possible, I felt as if I had swallowed a thousand squid beaks, alone, in a part of the ocean unknown to me. My bodily reflexes instinctively told me to regurgitate, to spit it all out, then to never experience anything new ever again. But with six weeks in Auckland still ahead of me, I knew I had to keep afloat–no matter how much I hated the foreign squid sitting uncomfortably in my stomach.

After years at sea, ambergris undergoes a transformation, developing a sweet aroma after prolonged exposure to air, sun, and ocean currents. Now a smooth, waxy, and rock-like substance, it washes up onto the western coastlines of New Zealand’s north island as one of the most rare, coveted, and expensive ingredients in perfume-making. Used in recognizable fragrances around the world, ambergris has become precious, known, and a reminder that in due time, even the most intimidating things in the most foreign cities will turn familiar.

I memorized street names and bus lines, built up cafe orders and grocery lists. With my cohort, I hiked nearby islands and had my fair share of premium New Zealand dairy in the form of frozen yogurt. I stopped approaching the ancient Mediterranean through the centralized lenses of certain city-states and began recognizing a holistic, integrated pan-Mediterranean culture.

On a weekend excursion to a volcanic peak, our local Māori guide detailed Auckland’s Polynesian legacy as we took in the panoramic view of the city in front of us. The Māori name for Auckland, she explained, is Tāmaki Makaurau. The land of a thousand lovers. The name is a testament to the region’s highly fertile volcanic soil, making it an ideal and sought-after home for several different iwi across centuries.

That night, I walked home on sidewalks I could navigate in my sleep, carrying the oceanic scent of ambergris. I thought of the whales, continuing to hunt squid to survive. I thought of the Polynesian voyagers, sailing through strange seas and loving the land they found. And I knew that I, too, would stay afloat, until the stairs became easier to climb, kia ora replaced hello, and I found myself on New Zealand’s northwestern coast, black sand at my ankles, having made something sweet out of something unfamiliar.