Collections of three species of oreos (smooth oreo,Pseudocyttus maculatus;black oreo,Allocyttus niger;and warty oreo,A. verrucosus) from Australasian waters were examined for genetic variation. Allozyme heterozygosity was high in each species (25–29 loci: mean heterozygosity per locus per sample ranging from 0.100 to 0.148), but mitochondrial DNA variation was less extensive (10 six‐base restriction enzymes: nucleotide diversity ranging from 0.0012 to 0.0021). Collections of smooth oreos from Western Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand did not permit the null hypothesis of a single stock to be confidently rejected. Black oreos from Tasmania and New Zealand were provisionally identified as separate stocks. Warty oreos from Tasmania were provisionally identified as separate from a Western Australia/New South Wales stock.