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) back to the western Pacific and after briefly stopping at Pearl Harbor, Guam, and Subic Bay, arrived in Tsingtao, China, on 20 April. She operated out of Tsingtao until the end of May, participating in the Navy's show of force along the northern China coast. She spent the first ten days of June in Shanghai and then got underway for Pearl. "Sterlet" reached Oahu on 22 June and conducted operations in the Hawaiian Islands for the next 16 months. She headed west again on 15 November 1947 and reached Brisbane, Australia, on 1 December. Five days later, the submarine shaped