Dynamics of the DNA Viral Community in Korean Coastal Waters

Recent advances in metaviromics have revealed vast viral diversity across aquatic environments, yet coastal marine viromes remain underexplored compared to their open-ocean counterparts. In this study, we analyzed 49 surface water samples from 16 coastal sites around Korea, generating 265 gigabases of metagenomic sequence data. Following quality control, 754 DNA viral contigs of ≥10 kb (medium quality or higher) were recovered, with bacteriophages comprising 95% and nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs) 5% of the total. Among these, Puniceispirillum phage HMO-2011 and Micromonas pusilla virus 12 T exhibited the highest relative abundance within their respective groups. In addition, we provided the dataset of environmental parameters such as water temperature, salinity, etc., as well as viral taxonomic profiling of contig-level metadata. This dataset provides a resource for the investigation of coastal DNA viral communities and supports comparative studies across marine environments.