go on overland routes within other nations. Japan kept official hunts of endangered species such as North Pacific right whales until 1994, but intentional by-catches of endangered still continue to present in unknown scales. Imports In 2009, Japan accepted imports of whale meat from Norway and Iceland for the first time in over a decade. The Norwegian shipment arrived in mid-2008 but was held by Japanese customs until January 2009 when the Japan Fisheries Agency finally approved the import. The international trade of whale meat is prohibited by CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). However, Japan, Norway and Iceland registered reservations with the treaty in order to remain exempt. The Norwegian company, Myklebust Trading, exports common minke whale and Iceland's Hvalur hf exports Fin whale, which is a vulnerable species. Environmental organizations criticized the trade and expressed doubts that Japanese markets could absorb the increase in supply as thousands of tonnes of whale meat remained in cold storage in Japan. In 2010, Iceland's proposed quota in killing fin whales was much larger than the amount of whale meat the Japanese market could absorb. In negotiations with Marc Wall, Economic Minister-Counselor at the US embassy in Tokyo, Jun Yamashita of the Japanese Fisheries Agencies, however, rejected a 2010 proposal to suggest to Iceland to reduce the number of killed fin whales to a more reasonable number. Disputes among the public in Japan The first whale watching in Japan was conducted in the Bonin Islands in 1998 by a group called Geisharen (), which was formed by groups of domestic and international people including both domestic and international celebrities and notable cetacean researchers and conservationists such as Roger Payne, Erich Hoyt, Richard Oliver, Jim Darling, John Ford, Kyusoku Iwamoto (cartoonist), Hutoushiki Ueki (science writer), Nobuyuki Miyazaki (head chief of the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute of The University of Tokyo), Nobuaki Mochizuki (one of the world's first whale photographers to record a living North Pacific right whale underwater in 1990 in Bonin Islands), Junko Sakuma (freelancer), and so on. During the time leading up until the group reaching the destination, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Japan) as well as anonymous groups and individuals watched the group's movements and threatened them not to conduct the tour. Prior to this movement, those who claimed conserving marine mammals including pinnipeds, or individuals who tried to correct illegal and over-extensive hunts (including