Subject area	Biology
More specific subject area	Microeukaryotic metagenomics
Type of data	Text files: sequences
How data was acquired	Illumina MiSeq Desktop Sequencer
Data format	Raw
Experimental factors	DNA extracted from microeukarytoic cells captured using 0.45μm filters.
Experimental features	Amplification of the V7 and V8 regions of the 18 S rDNA gene. Sequencing using the MiSeq Reagent Kit v2 (500-cycles) kit for the Illumina MiSeq platform.
Data source location	Chicago, IL, USA: Montrose Beach (41°58′0.71″N, 87°38′13.35″W), 57th Street Beach (41°47′25.54″N, 87°34′41.25″W), and Calumet Beach (41°43′8.18″N, 87°31′32.51″W); Wilmette, IL, USA: Gillson Park (42°4′45.10″N, 87°40′59.10″W).
Data accessibility	Raw data is available through NCBI׳s BioProject database, Accession: PRJNA294919 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA294919).