This study sampled 6 colonies of the temperate coral Oculina arbuscula. For each colony a sample was taken from an aposymbiotic branch (low endosymbiotic dinoflagellate density) and a symbiotic branch (normal density). Colonies were collected from Radio Island, North Carolina in 2018.</p><p>Extracted total RNA was prepped for RNA-sequencing and sent to NovoGene for sequencing on two lanes of an Illumina HiSeq 4000 sequencer as 150bp paired-end reads. Sequences contained in these files will represent sequences captured from the coral holobiont (e.g. coral animal, dinoflagellate symbionts, and other associated microbes).