Joe Pressil, 36, said he found out about the plan three months after they broke up - and has now been sued by his ex-partner for child support payments.

New research has shown marine bugs are far more abundant than was previously thought and make up 50% to 90% of all the biological material, or "biomass", in the oceans.

Experts estimate their numbers at around 10 to the power of 30 - or 1,000 times a billion times a billion times a billion.

Their combined weight matches that of 240 billion African elephants - or 35 elephants-worth of microbes for every human being on the planet, it was claimed today.

The true extent of the marine microbe population is only now being revealed by the Census of Marine Life, a huge project to survey life in the oceans involving more than 2,000 scientists.

In the 1950s, it was estimated that about 100,000 microbial cells inhabited a litre of sea water. Today, the same volume of water is believed to harbour more than a billion micro-organisms. A gram of ocean floor mud holds about the same number.

"In no other realm of ocean life has the magnitude of Census discovery been as extensive as in the world of microbes," said Dr Mitch Sogin, from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, US, who heads the International census of Marine Microbes (ICoMM).

"Scientists are discovering and describing an astonishing new world of marine microbial diversity and abundance, distribution patterns and seasonal changes."

ICoMM scientists have amassed a database that includes 19 million DNA sequences spanning more than 100 phyla - groups of organisms sharing the same body plan.

During one 11-month study in 2007 researchers analysed the DNA of more than 180 specimens dredged up from the western English Channel. One in every 25 readings yielded a new genus, or family, of bacteria - around 7,000 in all.

Another striking find was that of mats of microbial filaments off the coasts of Chile and Peru covering an area the size of Greece. The organisms forming the mats live in an oxygen-starved environment, thriving mostly on hydrogen sulphide.

Dr Victor Gallardo, who led the Chile-based team that made the discovery, said: "Some things are unknown because they are too small to see, and some things are unknown because they are too big to see."

Ocean microbes consist both of bacteria and archaea, a separate class of single-celled organisms that often live in extreme environments.

Marine microbes have a massive impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems by trapping carbon from the atmosphere as well as nitrogen, sulphur, iron, manganese and other elements.

The Census of Marine Life has also revised scientists' estimates of the abundance of zooplankton, the microscopic animals that inhabit the oceans.

When researchers began the zooplankton survey in 2004, scientists had described around 7,000 non-larval organisms which stay tiny all their lives. That figure is expected to have doubled to 14,000 by the time all the Census samples have been analysed and described.

One unusual zooplankton group, only discovered in 1983, is the loriciferans which measure just 0.24 millimetres and are among the smallest known multicellular marine animals.

Despite their minute size they have complex anatomies with stiletto teeth and heads covered with leaf-like or thorny structures.

The animals go through nine different stages of development as they mature, more than any other sea creature.

Several hundred loriceferans found during the Census have still not been formally described.

The Census of Marine Life began in 2000 and will present its final reports in October.

Three books will be published containing the data.