Dataset of blood cockle () microbiota from coastal areas and earthen-pond farms around the upper Gulf of Thailand.

The blood cockle (), a bivalve mollusc, is a unique seafood item in Southeast Asia. Bivalve molluscs are filter feeders upon plankton, and so they may bioaccumulate microbes and heavy metals in their tissues. Bacteria survival can be enhanced by living inside the shell and they can subsequently infect humans and higher vertebrates after ingestion of the bivalve. This study presented a metagenomics analysis of the bacteria associated with from six farms around the Gulf of Thailand. Three farms were located on the coast and the other three were from earthen ponds. Genomic DNA was extracted from the samples and analysed via sequencing of the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene, and then using a 97% DNA sequence similarity cut-off for designation of the operational taxonomic units. The environmental parameters, including temperature, pH, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and the concentration of three heavy metals (Cu, Cr, and Hg) and one metalloid (As) were investigated. The raw sequence data is available at the NCBI Sequence Read Archive accession number PRJNA592226. The Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Cyanobacteria were common components of the microbiota in all six habitats and together comprised more than 77% of the relative abundance in all the samples. This is the first report on the microbiome in blood cockles in Thailand by a culture independent method. The data can be applied for efficiently controlling and improving seafood safety management.