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The ocean is full of weird and wonderful creatures. Here are a few that frequent Atlantic Canada that you may not know about.

Masters of disguise

As if being highly intelligent masters of escape and disguise weren't enough to make this list, octopuses come in a variety of strange forms and colours.

Octopuses are in the taxonomic class of cephalopods, a word that translates to "head-foot".

Most octopuses die shortly after incubating their egg clutch, except for a tea-cup sized octopus called Bathypolypus arcticus, which frequents waters off Nova Scotia.

"They're distinguished by having possibly one of the longest egg-incubation periods of almost any species," said Chris Harvey-Clark, a marine biologist at Halifax's Dalhousie University.

Once they lay their eggs, Bathypolypus guards them until they hatch, which could take nearly three years.

"[That's] exceptional for any species," said Harvey-Clark.

Cannibalistic 'true Canadian shark'

The Greenland shark eats its own kind, lives at depths of 4,000 metres and can grow to nearly seven metres in length.

Perhaps most interesting is the recent discovery that these giants of the deep may live 400 years or longer and only reach puberty around the age of 150.

"They are the most enigmatic of the sharks in our water," said Boris Worm, a Dalhousie University ecologist.

"They are the oldest living vertebrate that we know of on our planet. To translate that, they are about five times as old as your grandmother and that's just stunning to me."

These beasts are occasionally captured as bycatch by Atlantic Canadian fishermen.

"I call them the true Canadian shark because they are cold-loving and as far as we know they're only found in Arctic and adjacent waters," said Worm.

Read more (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/atlantic-ocean-creatures-strange-interesting-1.3730711)