Around 1,500 seal pups were swept out to sea and drowned by a tidal surge off Canada's east coast this week after a lack of ice cover meant their mothers were forced to give birth on a small island, environment officials said on Friday according to Reuters. A resident on the island described how the mother seals had frantically tried to push their tiny pups back on to land as they floundered in the storm-tossed water. Grey seals in the Northumberland Strait -- which lies between the provinces of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island -- usually give birth on the pack ice which forms in winter. But abnormally warm conditions this year mean there is no ice in the strait, so some seals had to give birth on the beaches of Pictou Island. Unusually high tides hit the island this week after a major storm. "The majority of those seals born above the high water mark have been lost. We're estimating ... that of about 2,000 pups that were born prior to the storm, we lost about 1,500," said Jerry Conway, a marine mammal adviser for the federal Fisheries and Oceans Department. Television pictures showed dead seal pups littered on one of Pictou Island's beaches. Jane MacDonald, one of the island's few permanent residents, said the mother seals had tried hard to save their offspring. --SP 23 35 Local Time 20 35 GMT
