An octopus with ears like an elephant? Scallops that hang like bats? Yup, they're real and they live off the East Coast.

The creatures were found after Canadian marine scientists fitted the coast guard ship Hudson with Canada's most powerful deep-sea diving robot, and sent it to explore water too deep for humans.

"It was looking into areas that we have never gone before. Isn't that how it goes?" asked lead scientist Ellen Kenchington of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax.

It may sound like something out of Star Trek or a Jules Verne novel, but the team of 20 marine scientists stayed closer to home, venturing out in the Sable gully marine protected area and other regions off Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

The octopus was spotted on the second dive at 2,500 metres. When the robot got close enough, the researchers could see the metre-long octopus had fins near its eyes.