One of the aims of the project was to collect bacterial and archaeal community data and correlate these with environmental conditions in coastal marine sediment, including chemistry and metals profiles, as each of these sites are associated with industrial facilities in northern Australia. <p> Bacterial 16S rRNA (V6 region) sequence data were obtained by 454 sequencing of whole sediment DNA purified from the top 10 cm of sediment in Gove Harbour, Melville Bay, Northern Territory, Australia. Sampling occurred May 2008, March and August 2009, April 2010.