Tidal Moon is an Indigenous-owned aquaculture business founded in 2017 by Michael Wear, a Malgana Traditional Owner of Shark Bay, to revive trepang — dried sea cucumber — as Australia's oldest export trade. Divers hand-harvest six species of sea cucumber from Shark Bay's waters, which are then dried and processed at the company's Denham factory for sale into domestic and Southeast Asian markets; 12 Malgana Traditional Owners have been trained in commercial dive operations along the way.
Tidal Moon is now expanding into land-based sea cucumber aquaculture and seagrass restoration, working with Murdoch University on algal waste-to-profit processes and biochemical research with potential biomedical and collagen applications. In August 2024 it secured a 13-year seagrass translocation permit from the WA Government, backed by a $2.2M BHP Blue Carbon grant, to help restore blue-carbon seagrass meadows in Shark Bay.
