Beluga caviar Service to ban in 2005 the importation of beluga caviar which originated in the Caspian Sea and Black Sea basin. In 2006, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) suspended all trade made with the traditional caviar-producing regions of the Caspian and Black Seas (Beluga, Ossetra and Sevruga), (Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine) due to the producing countries' failure to apply international regulations and recommendations. Caviar from Iran is exempted from the ban. Iran is considered by CITES to practice effective conservation and policing of its fisheries. In January 2007,
USS Sterlet (SS-392) to the western Pacific with the Seventh Fleet. On these cruises, usually of approximately six months duration, she participated in a host of exercises and war game problems and visited most major ports in the Far East, particularly those in Japan, Taiwan, China and in some of the Central Pacific islands. After her return from her final deployment in the summer of 1968, "Sterlet" was found to be unfit for further naval service. Accordingly, she was decommissioned on 30 September 1968, and her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on the following day. She rendered her last service