Dr Moses Maurihungirire, Director of Resource Management in the Ministry, said recent autopsies on an adult female seal and a pup showed that all their body-fat reserves were depleted.

He said the blood and organs showed no abnormalities.

Hundreds of seal carcasses, especially those of pups, have washed up on the beaches of the coastal towns over the past four months or are found dying on the shore.

"It was also found during this seal harvesting season, which ended last month, that the blubber quantity of the animals, which is fat and oil, was lower than in preceding years," Maurihungirire said at a media briefing on Friday.

"Thus the most likely cause of deaths among the Cape fur seals can be attributed to starvation as a consequence of food scarcity," he added.

About one million Cape fur seals inhabit the coast of Namibia, the majority at Cape Cross, where some 980 000 are living.

Seals mainly feed on pilchards, horse mackerel and squid.

According to Maurihungirire, fish stocks are depleted.

This was recently confirmed by the pelagic fishing sector, which decided to call it a day after trawlers failed to catch any pilchards since the start of the season.

Maurihungirire was quick to point out, however, that the local Cape fur seal population had experienced similar starvation cycles in the 1980s and in 1995, 2000 and 2002.

"Some seals are also migrating north as there is now a larger colony at Cape Frio," he said.

Asked if the lack of fish along the Namibian coast might be connected to an increase in the jellyfish population, Maurihungirire said the Ministry was investigating that possibility.

The Ministry of Fisheries will not order additional culling of seal pups and bulls in order to reduce the seal population.

During this year's seal cull, from July to November, the Ministry set a quota of 60 000 nursing pups and about 7 000 bulls to be culled by two local companies, which share the quota.

Female seals are not culled, as they are said to have no commercial value.

The cull caused an international outcry among animal rights groups, led by Francois Hugo of Seal Alert South Africa.

The group is campaigning to ban seal harvesting in Namibia, as was done in South Africa in 1990.

In a recent letter sent to all relevant institutions in Namibia and international conservation organisations, Hugo said the unnatural increase in the female seal population was caused by human interference.

Starvation caused by over-fishing led to two mass seal die-offs since 1990, causing about 300 000 Namibian seals to starve to death, according to Hugo.

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