Pacific OCS eDNA metabarcoding (Western Flyer and Escanaba)
Four metabarcoding primer pairs were sequenced to assess the eukaryotic diversity. These primer pairs targeted regions of the mitochondrial gene cox1 (Leray et al. 2015; referred to as CO1), eukaryotic nuclear 18S rRNA (Amaral-Zettler et al. 2009; referred to as 18S), mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene to target fishes (Miya et al. 2015; referred to as 12S MiFish), and 28S rRNA gene to target anthozoan corals (McCartin et al. 2024; referred to as 28S). All samples were amplified in triplicate during PCR1 using primer concentrations and cycling conditions optimized for each primer set.