Inside the viewing cabin, which we named Calypso,
the tension was similar to that which preceded the first moon landing.
We were going to be the first to violate the perpetual darkness of the ocean depths.
The first to shine a light into the primeval darkness of the Cantabrian Sea.
The first images showed a black, empty world as the camera descended.
But, after long minutes, the lights began to be reflected.
The descent was coming to an end.
And, finally, solid ground.
The reference marker raised clouds of sediment on a surface
of rock and silt where thousands of small invertebrates welcomed us.
It was an emotional moment.
We were discovering a new world and these were the first images.
0:00:24:46.289
That same night, we would receive surprising confirmation
that our camera was indeed in the right place.
A trawler brought on board a giant squid caught
at barely 300 metres from the outer limit of our first buoy.
This squid, 6 m in length, would represent quite a find,
as it turned out to be a male,
much less frequent and smaller than the females.
This was the first male Architeuthis dux caught south
of parallel 55ºN in the Atlantic Ocean.
And what was more important, the best conserved of all.
There could have been no better start to the campaign.
Little did we imagine the problems that lay ahead of us.
Four days into the campaign,
we had already positioned our three buoys.
The first one had stabilised at a depth of 612 m.
The lure-emitter had started to bring results
and the tiny crustaceans that approached, attracted by it,
were quickly followed by the hunters of the ocean depths.
We worked in four hour shifts to constantly view the monitors
as we sailed the area marked out by the buoys,
which sent us the signal from the cameras.
The second camera rested on the sea bed at 709 m from the surface.
To this one, the deepest, we had attached
an infrared lens and lights so that the lights
would not frighten the animals accustomed to perpetual darkness.
We lost quality of image but new shadows around the lure
reaffirmed the decision to use infra-reds.
The third camera was suspended in the darkness
of the water column, at a depth of 530 m.
This was the one that least drew our attention
during the watch shifts,
but, it was the one that would give us the first surprise when small,
intermittent lights began to appear, dotted across the darkness.
The lights resembled the silhouette of squid,
or that's what it looked like to us,
so we were anxious to know the opinion of our experts.
Watching the monitors in real time,
it was difficult to identify the species that appeared,
and even more so if they did so intermittently,
but doctors Angel Guerra and Angel González concluded
that they must be squid with photophores of the species
genera Abralia or Abraliopsis, small light-emitting cephalopods
that can reach depths of 800 and 1,000 m, respectively.
It was our first encounter with the lights of the ocean depths;
below depths of 200 metres, not a single ray
of light penetrates the reigning darkness,
and so the species of these reaches have developed their own lights.
90% of the species that live in the ocean depths are bioluminescent;
that is, they are capable of generating their own light.
In a world where the darkness is total and permanent
these ghostly lights serve many different purposes.
Some use them to attract their prey.
Others to deflect the attacks of predators
by presenting them with false lures, or to emit alarm signals.
And many, simply, to communicate with others of the same species.
Among the cephalopods, too, bioluminescence
is very widespread and some species have even changed
their traditional means of defence, adapting it to this dark world,
expelling a stream of luminous ink.
Little by little, we were identifying different species
of the depths off the coast of Asturias,
as they appeared on the monitors of the Calypso.
The campaign was progressing as planned,
and the hopes that an Architeuthis or a Taningia
would appear before our cameras grew day by day.
Work progressed as normal on board the Investigador and the Científico.
Even the Cantabrian Sea appeared to have declared
a truce which facilitated the tasks onboard our ships.
But when you work in the depths of the ocean,
you know that problems can appear at any moment,
without prior warning.
On the 17th of November, the alarms of the first buoy went off in the Calypso.
One of the buoys had disappeared.
There were only two possibilities:
either the anchor had broken and the buoy
was drifting or a ship had hit it and the buoy had sunk.
During the whole day, the Investigador
combed the drift zone from the place where the buoy had been anchored,
following the direction of the current,
while Fernando Santiáñez, its captain, gave notice to the naval command.
Little did we imagine at that time that all our efforts would be in vain.
The buoy and with it our first case,
containing the images recorded over six full days,
had been lost forever.
But the problems had only just begun.
One of the antennae of the buoys was experiencing problems
in broadcasting and needed an emergency repair.
Shortly afterwards, in the Calypso,
the alarm went off, indicating water in one of the cameras.
It never rains but it pours.
Yet still, morale remained high, despite these many setbacks.
We were well aware of the difficulties we would face.
We still had many possibilities of coming face to face
with the giant squid
and we weren't about to give up now.
In addition to the repairs to the flooded camera,
the new situation required adjustments
in the depth of the other two cameras and our chief engineer
managed to make them in record time,
remaining awake all night to do so.
We had come through the worst days of the campaign.
But once more we had images of the ocean depths.
We were again on the hunt for the elusive, legendary Kraken.