Caviar sturgeon from the Sea of Azov began reaching the tables of aristocratic and noble Byzantine Greeks in the 10th century, after the commencement of large-scale trading between the Byzantine Empire and Kievan Rus'. The main types of caviar are Beluga, Sterlet, Kaluga hybrid, American osetra, Ossetra, Siberian sturgeon and Sevruga. The rarest and costliest is from beluga sturgeon that swim in the Caspian Sea, which is bordered by Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan. Wild caviar production was suspended in Russia between 2008 and 2011 to allow wild stocks to replenish. Azerbaijan and Iran also allow the fishing of sturgeon
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