Harp and hooded seals are being seriously affected by poor ice conditions in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and waters surrounding Newfoundland and parts of Labrador.

DFO marine mammal researcher Dr. Garry Stenson says there was virtually no pupping in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence this year.

Most years, up to 200,000 harp seal pups are born on the ice in the Gulf, but this year, pupping in the region was nearly non-existent.

Stenson says he and a colleague were in the region in recent weeks and evidence of pupping was severely limited.

They found a few thousand, but that was it. Stenson says there are two possibilities: that the seals had their pups on very poor ice, resulting in high pup mortality, or the seals simply moved further north.

Similar poor ice conditions resulted in high pup mortalities in 2005 when thousands of white coat carcasses washed up on Northern Peninsula beaches in May of that year.

Stenson says harp seals are long-lived and their populations can sustain high pup mortality in a single year, but poor ice conditions year over year could have an impact.

The estimated population of harp seals in the region is 7.5-million.