In 2014, the Fuhrman lab at USC deployed a high-frequency automated environmental sampler off the coast of Southern California (about 1-2 km from Catalina Island). This project was named the ESP project, which was launched to understand microbial succession and interaction at a short time scale. The sampler took samples once or twice daily, which were used to prepare amplicon, metagenomic and metatranscriptomic libraries. The rRNA amplicon sequences have been deposited at PRJEB22356.