Acknowledgements

We thank the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund (Grant/Award Number: 16-VUW-040), Genomics Aotearoa, and European Union’s Horizon 2020 4-OCEANS Synergy grant agreement no. 951649. Also, Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI), the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Gisborne Tatapouri Sports Fishing Club, Hawkes Bay Sports Fishing Club, Petone Working Man’s Club, and Leah Kemp for providing samples or sampling opportunities for C. auratus . Thank you to Ngāti Kuia, Ngāi Tai Ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Toa, and Ngāti Koata for supporting this research.

Author contributions

TO was responsible for the overall design of the study, sample collection and DNA extraction of the samples, performing all analyses, and the lead over the writing this manuscript. BS contributed by helping with the overall design of this study and helped write the manuscript. MW was responsible for funding acquisition, supervision, and provided feedback on analyses and helped with the writing of the manuscript. PR was responsible for funding acquisition, supervision, project administration, contributed by helping with the overall design of this study, and helped write the manuscript.

Data accessibility and Benefit-Sharing

Illumina short-read data and associated metadata are deposited on the Genomics Aotearoa repository (https://repo.data.nesi.org.nz/), Repository ID: AGDR00033 (Te Aika et al., 2023). All scripts used in the analyses are openly available on GitHub at https://github.com/tomoosting (to be made public at time of publication).

Conflict of interests

Nothing to declare.