This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). This article was submitted to Marine Evolutionary Biology, Biogeography and Species Diversity, a section of the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. The work has been supported by the GHaNA project: “The Genus Haslea, New marine resources for blue biotechnology and Aquaculture”, grant agreement, granted to J-LM, The project was also supported by the 2017–2022 research funds granted for implementation of a co-financed international research project from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. This work was also supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada under Grant, The funding from the South Africa-Poland Bilateral Collaboration Project facilitated by the National Research and Development Centre in Warsaw, Poland (NCBiR - project granted to AW), The samples were collected with full permission from the South African Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Department of Environmental Affairs Permit, |