SUBSCRIBE! bit.ly/PlanetDoc Full Documentaries every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday!
FULL DOCUMENTARIES | bit.ly/Full-Docs
This documentary narrates the campaign launched by a group of Spanish in search of the legendary Kraken, in northern Spain, in the depths of the Carrandi pit.
The appearance of a giant squid in the Asturian coast was the starting point of this project. The goal was to be the first to film in the wild the mysterious Architeuthis, which the Norwegian sailors called Kraken, the legendary giant squid.
The Architeuthis is the animal with the highest rate of growth in the animal kingdom. Thanks to the statoliths, we now know that these squid grow around 1 cm a day, which rapidly turns the tiny larvae into the largest invertebrates on Earth. And, as the detective work progresses, each new discovery in the bodies found helps us to approach the challenge of entering the world of the Kraken and trying to see it alive.
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. It was an emotional moment. We were discovering a new world and these were the first images.
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.
Now, we were working with just two cameras. One of them remained in the water column, at around thirty metres from the sea bed, while the other rested on a surface of silt where, beneath the infra-red light, stealthy fish and crustaceans prowled around our lures.
Before submerging our little remote-control robot, we planned to bait the ocean depths in order to attract the greatest possible number of species, especially the potential prey of the Architeuthis.
On the night of the 24th, our spirits began to fail. The Architeuthis had still not appeared and time was running out. And then, from the Calypso, the alarm rang out. We all came out of our cabins and headed towards the Calypso knowing that that alarm could be our last opportunity to film a giant squid.
SUBSCRIBE | bit.ly/PlanetDoc
FULL DOCUMENTARIES | bit.ly/Full-Docs
NATURE | bit.ly/PlNature
FACEBOOK | bit.ly/FBPDoc
TWITTER | bit.ly/TwPDoc
TUMBLR | bit.ly/TbPlDoc