Pathologist finds €500,000 ‘floating gold’ in dead whale in Canary Islands

Team hope sale of block of rare ambergris, used by perfumers, will help victims of 2021 La Palma volcano

When a sperm whale washed up dead on a beach in the Canary Island of La Palma no one imagined a valuable treasure was hidden in its entrails.

Heavy seas and a rising tide made it difficult to carry out a postmortem, but Antonio Fernandez Rodriguez, head of the institute of animal health and food security at the University of Las Palmas, was determined to find out why the whale had died.