A drastic decline in the population of ivory gulls could be sounding the alarm about changing conditions in the North, Canadian scientists say.

Scientists have found the population of all-white ivory gulls in the Canadian Arctic has dropped by more than 80 per cent in the last 20 years. Recent surveys by the Canadian Wildlife Service turned up 300 ivory gulls in the Canadian Arctic, down from about 2,400 in the 1980s.

"Everyone's heard of endangered species, but you don't exactly expect to be running into a species that's endangered up in an area where there's so few people," said Mark Mallory, a seabird biologist with the wildlife service in Nunavut.

Scientists are also seeing fewer birds in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the birds winter, said Mallory. Researchers in Norway and Russia also noticed sharp declines.

Thinning ice conditions and contaminants could be factors in the decline, which was first noted by the Inuit.

"We did have some collections of eggs from the mid-1970s and again from the 1980s," said Birgit Braune, who studies toxic substances in the scavengers for the wildlife service in Ottawa. "It did indicate that relative to other species, they certainly had high concentrations of toxic chemicals in them."

The service is preparing a status report to have the gulls' status reviewed under the Species at Risk Act.

Canadian and international researchers plan to work together to understand why the gulls are vanishing from the Arctic.