A single bluefin tuna has sold in Japan for 155m yen ($1.7m; £1.05m), almost triple the record price set last year.
High bids traditionally mark the year's first auction at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market.
Even the buyer, sushi chain owner Kiyoshi Kimura, who also paid out the record price last year, said the cost was "a bit high".
The sale came amid continued warnings from environmentalists that tuna stocks are dwindling and overfished.
'Encourage Japan'
This year's record-breaking fish was caught off north-eastern Japan and weighed in at 222kg (489lbs), some 47kg lighter than last year's prize-winner, which fetched 56m yen.
The prices do not necessarily reflect quality or size and are more linked to publicity and setting the tone for the business year.
The auction at the market - which trades millions of dollars of products daily and is a popular tourist destination - began at 05:00 local time.
Mr Kimura immediately carted his purchase off to a nearby branch of his Sushi Zanmai chain.
He said he wanted to "encourage Japan" with his bid.
The price works out at about $7,600 per kg ($3,500/lb).
Japan consumes more than half of the world's bluefin.
New figures to be released on Monday are expected to show a continued decline in Pacific bluefin stocks.
Amanda Nickson, of the Pew Environmental Group's global tuna conservation campaign, told Associated Press news agency: "Everything we're hearing is that there's no good news for the Pacific bluefin. We're seeing a very high value fish continue to be overfished."
Thousands of people have died after an earthquake sent huge waves crashing into coastal resorts across south and east Asia. Dr Brian Baptie, a senior seismologist with the British Geological Survey, explained how the wave, or tsunami, was created.In geological terms, what has happened?
Sumatra, or north-western Indonesia, is right on a plate boundary. The earth's surface is made up of lots of different tectonic plates and they are all moving around.
The plate that has the Indian Ocean on it is moving roughly north-east and colliding with Sumatra. And as that collision takes place, the Indian Ocean plate gets subducted underneath Sumatra, and as that plate is subducted it breaks up and that is what causes the earthquake.
This earthquake been one of the largest ever, one of the great earthquakes. There has been a rupture along a fault about 1,000km long, and that has generated a vertical displacement of about 10m. The displacement in the sea floor has generated this huge tsunami. How does the wave develop?
There's a huge vertical displacement in the sea floor as a result of the earthquake and that displaces a huge volume of water.
You can imagine, if the rupture is 1,000km long with a 10m displacement in the sea floor you get hundreds of cubic kilometres of water and that results in a wave that travels through the ocean.
GIANT EARTHQUAKES
1960 - Chile, 9.5 magnitude
1964 - Alaska, 9.2
1957 - Alaska, 9.1
1952 - Russia, 9.0
2004 - Indonesia, 9.0
In the deep ocean the height of the wave can be a few metres, maybe 5-10m, and it travels at a few hundred kilometres per hour.
That means it travels relatively slowly compared with the seismic waves from the earthquake, and it has arrived quite a few hours later at surrounding coastal areas all around the Indian Ocean.
As the tsunami wave approaches the shore it slows down, because the water gets shallower and what that means is the wave increases dramatically.
When it hits the shoreline it can be 10-20m, and that is probably what has happened in this case. Why was there no warning this was happening?
There is a tsunami warning system in place in the Pacific Ocean because there is a historical precedent of lots of earthquakes causing tsunamis like this, throughout the 20th Century.
But there is no real precedent for a tsunami like this in the Indian Ocean. So this is the first time this has happened, and there is no warning system as far as I know in the Indian Ocean. Could there be more waves on a similar scale?
Unlikely there will be further tsunamis of the same size. What normally happens when you get a very large earthquake is you get aftershocks that continue for many days.
They are usually a bit smaller than the main shock, although it is not impossible that there could be another one. But there may be aftershocks and they may generate smaller tsunamis.
A whale washed up on the beach in Cornwall will be put down after vets said it was too sick to be refloated.
Rescuers were called to the scene in Carlyon Bay where the 65ft (20m) whale was reported stranded at 04:45 BST.
Emergency services cordoned off the area to avoid causing the fin whale more distress.
But vets from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) said there was no hope of refloating the animal which was stranded on an outgoing tide.
Insp Dave Meredith, of Devon and Cornwall Police, tweeted: "Sadly the whale at Carlyon bay is too sick for recovery. It is going to be humanely destroyed. Very sad."
'Distressing scene'
Coastguards said the animal was reported to them as thrashing about in the shallow water at the beach near St Austell.
Brixham Coastguard watch manager Paul Myers said: "It's obviously a very distressing scene and we would ask the public to stay away from the beach to allow the rescue unit to do their work and save the whale from further distress."
The fin whale, the second largest animal on the planet, is a globally endangered species.
The BDMLR is a voluntary network of trained experts who respond to calls by the public and emergency services when whales are stranded.
A 7.3 magnitude quake has struck off Japan's eastern coast, triggering a small tsunami and sparking evacuations.
A one-metre wave hit Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture and many people heeded calls to move to higher ground before all alerts were later lifted.
The quake epicentre was about 245km (150 miles) south-east of Kamiashi at a depth of about 36km, the US Geological Survey said.
Miyagi was hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Swaying violently
The US-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center had said there was no threat to the wider Pacific Ocean but had warned a local tsunami could be destructive for local coastlines.
There have been no reports of deaths or injuries, and all tsunami warnings were cancelled at 19:20 local time (10:20 GMT), broadcaster NHK said.
Warnings of the tsunami height had varied between 50cm and 2m.
The BBC's Rupert Wingfield Hayes in Tokyo says any such height would represent a far lower risk of devastation than the 10-11 metre tsunami that struck in 2011 but that, since then, the country has clearly become jittery about any shaking of the earth.
The tsunami warnings had extended from the top of the main island of Honshu down towards Tokyo and evacuations were ordered from some of the affected areas.
With Japan's early warning system, NHK was able to break off its regular programming and issue an alert about the earthquake shortly before it struck.
A presenter on state broadcaster NHK then told viewers: "Remember last year's quake and tsunami. Call on your neighbours and flee to higher ground now!"
We're now at an official evacuation centre with about 50 other people waiting to hear what to do next”
John HeritageTeacher, Miyagi Prefecture
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda cancelled campaigning for the 16 December election to return to his office.
Communications to Miyagi have proven difficult, with the high volume of telephone calls. Trains in the prefecture have been halted and the runway at Sendai airport closed.
English teacher John Heritage, who is in Tagajo in Miyagi Prefecture, told the BBC the earthquake was not as powerful as some he had experienced but was worrying as it went on so long.
"We're now at an official evacuation centre with about 50 other people waiting to hear what to do next," he said.
Other people reported being alerted to the earthquake prior to its arrival by Japan's mobile phone-based warning system.
One tweeted that he was given 10 seconds and was able to slow his car before the shaking struck.
The USGS reported three aftershocks in the same area, of 6.2, 5.5 and 4.7 magnitudes.
The 9.0 magnitude quake that struck on 11 March 2011 caused a devastating tsunami and left more than 15,000 people dead, with more than 3,200 missing.
That quake triggered a meltdown of fuel rods at the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing radiation leaks and mass evacuations.
The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power, told Agence France-Presse there were no reports of problems there this time, although workers had moved to higher ground.
A pair of eyeless, cave-dwelling fish species, separated millions of years ago, have turned up on either side of the Indian Ocean.
A study published in PLoS One showed that blind Madagascan and Australian cave fish share a common ancestor.
Their forebears probably lived in caves on the prehistoric southern super-continent Gondwanaland.
Then continental drift tore this family apart - transporting them to their current locations.
On his voyages of discovery, Darwin noted eyeless, colourless cave-dwelling creatures whose appearance was so bizarre and primitive he thought they were "wrecks of ancient life".
Prosanta Chakrabarty, assistant professor and curator at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, and his colleagues were particularly interested in two populations of goby fish living in Madagascar and north-western Australia.
Gobies form one of the largest families of fish, containing about 2,000 different species.
Though living in different parts of the world the cave fish shared important features: they were small - under 10 cm in length - eyeless, colourless and lived in freshwater, limestone caves.
How such similar fishes came to be living on different sides of the world was the question the researchers wanted to answer.
In the genes
One possibility was that the cave fishes had evolved independently, from terrestrial counterparts.
That they're 6,000 km apart in Madagascar and Australia is pretty remarkable”
Prosanta ChakrabartyLouisiana State University Museum of Natural Science
Species adapt to environmental challenges and opportunities and - through a process of natural selection - only the fittest survive.
When separate species are exposed to the same selective pressures they often come up with the same solutions - a process known as convergent evolution.
For example, the elongated fingers of both the aye aye lemur of Madagascar and the striped opossum of Australia evolved so they could probe nooks and crannies for their favourite insect food.
In the case of the cave fishes, an alternative possibility was that the cave-fishes' odd features - or traits - were adaptations inherited from an ancestor common to both.
To determine which scenario was most likely, Dr Chakrabarty and his team used phylogenetic analysis - a study of the historical record held deep within their DNA sequences - to rebuild the goby family tree.
The researchers compared DNA sequences from more than 100 different goby species, including those from Australian and Madagascan cave fish that the researchers had collected.
Though separated by thousands of kilometres of ocean, the cave-dwelling fish of Madagascar and north-western Australia were genetically more similar to each other than to any other goby: they shared a common ancestor.
"That they're 6,000 km apart in Madagascar and Australia is pretty remarkable," observed Dr Chakrabarty.
Lost continents
But when and where did their ancestors live?
To answer this, the researchers used goby fossil records to calibrate their trees.
The newly chronicled evolutionary history of the fish showed that their shared ancestor was swimming in subterranean pools 45 - 110 million years ago, when the Earth looked very much different to how it looks today.
Underground caves on either side of the Indian Ocean hide a fishy secret
Australia and Madagascar formed part of a super-continent, called Gondwanaland, which also included what are now Antarctica, Africa, South America and India.
Around 180 million years ago, America and Africa broke away from this super-continent. Then, about 60 million years later in the early Cretaceous period, Australia-Antarctica started to split from India-Madagascar.
It was this separation that ultimately led to the descendants of the Gondwanaland cave fish living on opposite sides of the Indian Ocean.
Dr John Sparks, a co-author from the American Museum of Natural History explained: "The sister-group relationship between obligate cave fish from Madagascar and Australia is a remarkable example of Gondwanan vicariance - a split dating back to the Late Cretaceous."
But the study threw up some anomalies.
The authors believe that the common ancestor was dispersed throughout eastern Gondwanaland - which would include India - yet this country is devoid of similar gobies.
"Antarctica could have provided the connection [between Gondwanaland-locked Madagascar and Australia], or gobies could have been present in India but became extinct," suggests Dr Chakrabarty.
A more controversial possibility is that our knowledge of Gondwanaland might need updating - the kind of change to geology that very recently saw the presumed history of the isthmus of Panama adjusted by millions of years.
The study also threw up another surprise: one of the Australian caves explored by the team contained a fish that had developed pigment.
John Sparks, another curator at the museum, observed: "Our results, and the fact that we have recently discovered new cave fish species in both Madagascar and Australia belonging to these genera, in particular a fully pigmented form from Madagascar, are intriguing from another perspective - they show that caves are not evolutionary dead-ends."
Often neglected, the
world’s sanitation crisis needs urgent attention across multiple sectors to meet
the basic needs of 2.5 billion people without access. Creating demand for
sanitation and behavior change will be critical.
While food and water top the list of essentials for health and human
development, around 1 billion people still go hungry, and nearly 1 billion still
lacked access to an improved water source. The opportunity to explore the relationship between these two essentials is
drawing thousands of academics and practitioners from the food and water sectors
to Stockholm for World Water Week, August 26-31. This year, the annual
conference will focus on “Water and Food Security.” It’s an important topic.
Access to food and safe, clean water is critical to every aspect of human
life—agriculture, education, energy, health, and many others. However, there is
another urgent issue that gets less attention but is equally critical:
sanitation.
Sanitation—a fundamental means for preventing disease and elevating quality
of life—has long been considered neglected in the sector. Since 2002, when
sanitation was added to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), sanitation
activities and practitioners have increased global awareness of the role
sanitation plays in improving human health and well-being. "The issue of sanitation is about health and economic loss, but it’s also an
issue of equity and human rights," said Lead Sanitation Specialist Eddy Perez of
the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) of
the World Bank. "It’s the poorest people who do not have basic access, which
contributes to keeping them poor." An estimated 1.7 million people die each year because of unsafe water, lack
of sanitation, and unhygienic practices; about 90 percent of those deaths are
children under age five. Improvements to sanitation and access to clean drinking
water could reduce diarrheal disease by nearly 90 percent. The economic toll
of poor sanitation is equally staggering, as high as 7 percent of GDP in
some countries. And while sanitation has received more attention in recent
years, there is still more learning needed on the most effective approaches and
at-scale service delivery models. Old problem, new solutions The solutions can’t happen in silos or with business-as-usual models. New
approaches are being tested, and they show tremendous promise. The current World
Bank sanitation portfolio is about US$1.7 billion, with approximately 7.4
million people expected to benefit in more than 30 countries. WSP is working with governments on national-scale
rural sanitation programs targeted at increasing access to and use of
sanitation facilities. The Scaling up Rural Sanitation Project is credited with
contributing to around 9 million people gaining access in India, Indonesia, and
Tanzania.
A
hardware store in Peru sells sanitation supplies. Photos: Water & Sanitation
Program.
More emphasis has been placed on the idea that ownership begins when people
invest time, effort, and resources into building a latrine. The importance of
changing behaviors and the factors that influence behaviors, such as pride,
convenience, well-being, and status, is now recognized. Increasingly, a
combination of approaches that ultimately lead to changing behaviors and
increasing demand and supply are understood as critical for success. In the past five years, the Scaling
Up Rural Sanitation Project has focused on learning what works to scale up
access to sanitation. Among the lessons:
Efforts to improve sanitation should target community-wide behavior change,
stimulate demand for sanitation products and services, and increase supply to
ensure that new demands are met.
Scaling innovative programmatic approaches requires an effective and
sustainable service delivery model in which national, state, and local
governments; communities; the local private sector; and development partners all
participate.
Changing social norms around open defecation and latrine use through
sanitation and hygiene promotion is important for long-term sustainability of
behaviors.
Across sectors With water and sanitation at the nexus of so many areas, the water and
sanitation crises have implications for the entire development community. We
encourage you to follow us on Twitter @wspworldbank to join the
discussion in Stockholm at World Water Week. Share your ideas, ask the hard
questions, tell us how your work is affected by the crises, and work with us
towards the solutions. RELATED RESOURCES
Kiyoshi Kimura stumped up almost three times as much as he did last year
