Collected fish taxon-occurrences of surrounding sea area of the West Island,Hainan Province,China

Study Extent

Surrounding sea area of the West Island is located in nearshore of the Sanya City, Hainan Province, China

Sampling

The water samples were collected at five localities in the sea area surrounding the West Island, Hainan Province, China in June, 2021 . The distance between two localities is not less than 1 km. Three replicated 2 L water samples were collected at each locality.

Method steps

1. The eDNA collection was performed using the filtration method with 0.45 um MCE membranes (Pall Whatman, U.K.). Each filtration membrane was separately preserved in a 2 ml centrifuge tube and stored at -10 ℃ until back to the laboratory. The negative control was made through filtering 300 mL pure water. The sterile masks and latex gloves were always worn during sampling, and changed between different samples to prevent cross-contamination. Both the sampling devices and the filtration tools were cleaned with 10% bleach containing sodium hypochlorite to prevent external DNA contamination.

The dataset presents the results of species composition of 31 coral reef fish detected in five sampling localities in the sea area surrounding the West Island using eDNA techniques. The important information including taxonomic, geographic location of the occurrence and habitat condition were provided 10 species.