3.2 Sequencing results
A total of 2,117,314 sequences were obtained after quality control from all 48 samples (sediment, seawater, sea cucumber skin, and guts) from each of the three sites (SFB, LCC, and TPC) along the pollution gradient. The effective reads ranged from 14,872 to 76,342 with an average of 44,110 (± 17,337 SD) reads per sample. The maximum total number of ASVs generated was approximately 300 (Figure S1) after filtering unwanted taxa and annotating sequences to the genus level.