As authorities in Australia face the unhappy task of disposing of the bodies of hundreds of dead whales beached on Tasmania, a key question is what caused this week’s mass stranding.
As widely reported, nearly 400 long-finned pilot whales died after becoming beached at Macquarie Heads on Tasmania’s west coast.
It is the largest mass stranding recorded in Australia, although by no means the largest involving pilot whales: for example, a century ago, about 1,000 were beached in New Zealand.
Going back further, the fossil record indicates that mass strandings – which mostly affect dolphins, porpoises and toothed whales – have been happening for millions of years.
While they can be natural events, experts say human-induced chemical and noise pollution may also play a role today.
Globally, around 2,000 stranding events take place annually. Similar events are seen even in the UAE, with a dead killer whale or orca having been found off Ras Al Khaimah in 2008 after the animal died probably after getting lost.
Following the "sick leader" prompts mass deaths
According to Dr Andrew Brownlow, a veterinary surgeon who has been conducting post-mortems on stranded whales and other cetaceans for more than a decade, the “sick leader hypothesis” is one possible explanation for this week’s events in Tasmania, which have seen about 380 individuals die and several dozen helped into deeper waters by rescuers.
Pilot whales live in large matrilineal pods of adult females and their family members, and a leading animal may have approached the shore after becoming disoriented because it was in unwell or distressed.
“If you have a leader who, for whatever reason – disease or trauma or noise – if that animal decides to go in a particular direction, the others will follow,” said Dr Brownlow, who heads the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme in the UK and advises the International Whaling Commission on strandings.
“That’s where you have the horrific situation where you can get 400 to 500 animals on a beach. If you looked at these animals, you would find that 95 percent were healthy at the point at which they reached the beach.”
Noise of industry a threat to marine life
Local geography also often plays a part, with the creatures’ sonar navigation system struggling to identify a gently sloping shoreline.
“It’s very difficult for them to navigate near soft sand,” said Dr Brownlow. “It’s like us trying to navigate in a forest in the fog.”
Other factors, said Dr Brownlow, were noise from naval sonar and oil and gas exploration, which can disturb cetaceans and make them flee safer deep water to more hazardous shallow waters. Pollution can also cause animals to become ill and disoriented, while rough seas may also play a role.
“[Mass strandings] have been going on for as long as there’ve been animals like these in the sea, it would seem,” said Dr Brownlow.
“We don’t actually have to assume it’s because of something we’ve done, although it would be highly disingenuous of us to discount the possibility we’re somehow partly responsible for these type of events.”
Strandings could put some species in grave danger
Indeed, artificial causes could be causing an increase in strandings in some parts of the world. In the UK, for example, 4,896 whales, dolphins and porpoises died on beaches between 2011 and 2017, up 15 percent on the previous seven-year period.
“Reasons may include an increase in underwater noise sources, entanglement in fishing gear and plastic ingestion,” said Danny Groves, a spokesperson for the international charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation.
With the worldwide population of long-finned pilot whales numbering around one million, a mass stranding does not threaten the species, although many other cetaceans are much less abundant.
Andrew Baillie, cetacean strandings officer at the Natural History Museum in London, said it was important for people who had seen beached animals anywhere in the world to report them to the national strandings body.
“Pilot whales are not threatened; even a mass stranding is not going to be a conservation threat, but for rarer species, it’s worth us monitoring the strandings, and if we can get to it, we can take samples and try to find out why it’s stranded,” he said.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Barcelona 4 (Suarez 27', Vidal 32', Dembele 35', Messi 78')
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Ammar 808:
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Profile of Hala Insurance
Date Started: September 2018
Founders: Walid and Karim Dib
Based: Abu Dhabi
Employees: Nine
Amount raised: $1.2 million
Funders: Oman Technology Fund, AB Accelerator, 500 Startups, private backers
