Fishermen get rich from whale - 9th July 2021

These fishermen in Yemen are now rich.

Abdulhakeem and his friends are fishermen. One day, they went fishing as usual. They found a dead whale. After this, their lives changed.

Fares Abdulhakeem: "I head out to sea everyday in search of my daily catch. And on one of those days, we found a dead whale. It turned out to be a whale full of ambergris."

There was something special inside the dead whale - 'ambergris'.

Ambergris is expensive. People use it to make perfume. Whales make ambergris in their stomachs.

The men took the whale to the beach. They cut it open. They found 12 kilogrammes of ambergris inside. A businessman bought the ambergris for $1.5 million.

Life is difficult in Yemen. There is a war. Many people have no homes and little food. For the Yemeni fishermen, the whale changed everything.

Fares Abdulhakeem: "Many people made a good use of it. There are those who bought boats, others built or fixed their houses. I built my house - I built my future. The circumstances here are already difficult."

But the group of fishermen won't stop fishing. They love it. It is their life.

Salim Sharf: "We are simple people, fishermen looking for our catch everyday. If you found your catch for the day, you thank God. Suddenly, the Most Merciful gave us this."