Inupiat whale hunters capture bearded seal song

Herbert Adams was expecting to see some whales when he sunk a video camera into the ocean off the coast of Barrow, Alaska.

Instead, he was surprised with the sounds he captured..

"Me and my family were just, uh, 'Let's see what's under the water," he says. "We threw it down and recorded for a couple minutes.

"When we brought it back up we were really astonished at how good the sound quality was, rather than what the video had captured — just some jellyfish."

After hearing a recording, Dr. Jennifer Burns of the University of Alaska says, "That call is almost certainly that of a male bearded seal."

Andrew W. Trites with the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia agreed. 

Adams says making the recording was a fun way to pass the time while whale hunting.

He says if you listen closely, you can hear the call of a distant bowhead whale.