Water, oil mousse, and sediment bacterial community structure, Northern Gulf of Mexico, May 2010-May 2011

This dataset reports the bacterial community structure of surface oil mousse, ambient surface water, bottom water, and sediment adjacent to the wellhead. Ambient surface water and surface oil mousse samples were collected in May 2010. Samples were collected from an oil spill site and a control site. Oil mousse samples were also collected from a marsh site July 21, 2010. Sediment core and grab samples were collected in May 2011 adjacent to the Deepwater Horizon wellhead. Water samples were also collected just above the core and grab samples. DNA was extracted at the Research and Testing Laboratory (Lubbock, TX) and bacterial tag-encoded FLX amplicon pyrosequencing (bTEFAP) was used to amplify the 500 bp region of the 16S rRNA gene.