The 'saltwater cowboys' reviving Australia's ancient sea cucumber trade

SBS Australia

3 days ago

Three brittle brown cylinders rest in Michael Wear's palm, each the length of a finger. These shrivelled and faceless lumps are an unusual but coveted delicacy, containing centuries of seafaring history, and the key, Wear hopes, to reviving an ancient trade in his hometown of Shark Bay. Sea cucumbers — or 'trepang' as they are known by the area's traditional owners, the Malgana — are a type of sea floor-dwelling invertebrate that plays a crucial role in breaking down organic matter in the ocean. On the outskirts of Denham, Western Australia, the morning sun beats down on the headquarters of Tidal Moon, a First Nations-owned sea cucumber business run by Wear. He emerges through the plastic-fringed door of the company's brand-new export facility, which is just weeks away from opening. The iridescent rooms echo, swirling with the scent of fresh latex, detergent and anticipation.
Soon, hand-harvested sea cucumbers will be dried, processed and shipped to lucrative markets in South-East Asia. It's a far more streamlined system than the one that existed in the early 1700s, when sea cucumbers (trepang) were first traded by First Nations groups in the Top End. Each year, thousands of fishermen from Makassar, a port city in modern-day Indonesia, would sail the trade winds south to Arnhem Land to exchange goods for the delicacy, which is Australia's earliest export.
Sea cucumbers belong to the same animal group as starfish and sea urchins, called echinoderms. Source: Supplied / Tidal Moon "From what the records show, they used to swap sea cucumbers for iron for their spears," Wear says.
I thought it was incredible that there was a trade before colonisation. Wear is a Malgana man whose connection to Shark Bay traces back 30,000 years. Although Malgana people were not known to have traded sea cucumbers, Wear's ancestors lived through Shark Bay's various boom and bust cycles. After the pearling, pastoral and fishing industries waned, employment opportunities for Indigenous people all but dried up. Now, the community is left with two stark options: to take local tourism jobs or leave their traditional lands for cities or mining towns. "If you can create a business that's sustainable, that's culturally directed, you can create jobs and a middle class within small coastal towns," he says.
"Right now, you're either rich or you're on Centrelink, there's nothing in between."
Michael Wear demonstrates the sun-drying room at Tidal Moon's processing facility in Shark Bay, where the company dries sea cucumbers using natural light. Source: SBS News / Otis Filley Wear established Tidal Moon in 2017 and has since trained 12 young divers, employing two full-time staff members, Alex Dodd and Shyem Nicette. As the young faces of the First Nations-led business, they work under the mentorship of Tidal Moon's head of offshore operations, Sean McNeair, to harvest sea cucumbers in unpredictable conditions. They're affectionately known as Shark Bay's 'saltwater cowboys'.
But the ripple effects of the business reach beyond the community. The saltwater cowboys are drawing on traditional knowledge to restore damaged seagrass, the beating heart of life in Shark Bay.
The threat of 'carbon bombs' Beyond the export facility lies the richly contoured country of Shark Bay, or Gathaagudu. Translating to 'the place of two bays', jade waters marble Gathaagudu's bronzed earth, while quartz sand dunes tumble into its ivory-shell shorelines. Sheer cliffs plunge into the Indian Ocean, marking Australia's most westerly point.
It's a landscape as harsh as it is fragile, and there is no clearer example than the world's largest seagrass meadows, which sweep 4,000 square km of Shark Bay's banks like an indigo carpet across the seafloor.
Shark Bay's extensive seagrass meadows are among the largest and most diverse seagrass ecosystems in the world. Source: SBS News / Otis Filley These underwater forests are a playground for whales, sharks, dugongs, dolphins, turtles, crabs, and tourists, who flock in four-wheel drives to the World Heritage-listed area. But, like most of the planet's seagrass meadows, they are disappearing as the climate simmers. After watching a marine heatwave over the summer of 2010-2011 raze nearly a quarter of Shark Bay's seagrass in only a few weeks, the seed for Tidal Moon was sown. While scouring the seafloor for sea cucumbers, the divers can also collect scientific samples and replant seagrass reserves. Globally, we lose half a hectare every 30 minutes, says Jennifer Verduin, a marine scientist at Perth's Murdoch University. As well as being a vital habitat, seagrass is a well-documented food source and carbon sink. Seagrass meadows store five times more carbon than terrestrial forests, but their significance is largely overlooked as they are hidden beneath the ocean's surface.
"One of the key things we're trying to do is keep the carbon capture in the seafloor. Without seagrass restoration, carbon bombs go off. There are about 40 million tonnes of CO2 at risk [of being released] in Shark Bay. That's nine LNG [liquefied natural gas] trains," Wear says.
Shark Bay has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1991, which includes its coastal waters, nature reserves and lagoons. Source: SBS News / Otis Filley The 'building block' for life in the bay Seagrass restoration is advancing along Western Australia's threatened coastline. In Cockburn Sound, an inlet south of Fremantle, an underwater robot is sowing thousands of seagrass seeds at high speed along the ocean floor. In Shark Bay, environmental DNA (eDNA) samples are collected to map seagrass biodiversity in the bay. Tidal Moon's approach melds modern science with traditional wisdom. As saltwater people, the divers have an intimate understanding of tides and local ocean species, inherited through songlines and stories.
"We have a responsibility from a cultural perspective that we need to look after the area because it sustains us. It's who we are, it's our identity," says Darren 'Capes' Capewell, a Nhanda and Malgana man who runs cultural tours in Shark Bay.
Wirriya jalyanu means grass from the ocean. It's the building block for all life in the bay. Traditional Owners feel the ebb and flow of traditional waterways and Sea Country, but some Elders have noted a change in the air.
"They don't say that we've lost seagrass. They'll refer to a sand patch, and the sand patch is actually growing. Inadvertently, they're saying we've lost seagrass," Capewell explains.
Darren 'Capes' Capewell says conserving Shark Bay is integral to the continuation of First Nations cultures and identity in the area. Source: SBS News / Otis Filley Fifteen years have passed since Shark Bay's last marine heatwave, but the ocean has not recovered. Some patches are empty of turtles, or have a glut of catfish, says Wear. While deep underwater, his divers have catalogued over 4,000 hours of footage — a 'living library' of marine observations. "The effects of hot water aren't felt overnight," he says, adding that this year, the community has been bracing for more bad news. In February, Shark Bay's waters were an alarming 4C warmer than usual. Marine heatwaves swept across Western Australia, turning Ningaloo Reef's golden-brown corals ghostly white.
In August 2024, Tidal Moon was given a 'ground-breaking' 13-year translocation permit from Western Australia's government to scale up seagrass restoration. This, plus a BHP Blue Carbon grant worth $2.2 million, will help towards their ambitious goal of replanting 1,000 square kilometres of seagrass in Shark Bay.
Twelve of the world's 60 seagrass species are found in Shark Bay, and Tidal Moon is targeting the two most common – wireweed (Amphibolis antarctica) and ribbonweed (Posidonia australis). With the help of scientists from the University of Western Australia and Murdoch University, including Murdoch's Jennifer Verduin, the divers collect rhizomes – the underground root system of seagrasses– and replant them in areas of the seafloor susceptible to carbon loss. "As Western scientists, we have lost the art of observation," Verduin says.
Traditional Owners, including Tidal Moon's divers, have a "careful" and "circular" approach to marine conservation, she explains.
Tidal Moon's approach to sea cucumber harvesting draws on 30,000 years of traditional knowledge. Source: SBS News / Otis Filley Breaking into the sea cucumber market Tidal Moon's discovery of a connection between sea cucumbers and seagrass is a prime example. Scientific studies on the connection are still in their infancy, but Wear's divers have noticed a "symbiotic" relationship between the two species. In areas where they grow side by side, sea cucumbers grow faster, says Wear, pointing to research from Thailand that supports this trend. Verduin agrees that the relationship might be "mutually beneficial" due to a web of factors, including nutrient cycling and habitat protection.
"[Sea cucumbers] are the earthworms of the ocean. The function of sea cucumbers is overturning the soil and redistributing nutrients, but seagrasses, in turn, protect sea cucumbers, giving them a home to work within," she says.
Marine scientist Jennifer Verduin is among a team of researchers working closely with Tidal Moon divers to restore seagrass species in Shark Bay. Source: SBS News / Otis Filley Harvesting sea cucumbers relies on reading the intricate rhythms of the tides and the moon — a process that inspired the name Tidal Moon. "The marine industry is usually considered difficult, dangerous and unknown," says Sean McNeair, Tidal Moon's head of operations. McNeair learned to hunt and fish from his grandfather, a Malgana pearler and mud crabber, and spent more than a decade working as a commercial diver along far-flung coastlines before the call of Shark Bay brought him home.
"The first day you dive, it becomes an obsession," he says.
For me, it's like going to the moon - underwater, it's a whole different planet. It's quiet and you can hear yourself breathe, you're in amongst animals and wildlife you're not usually part of. He's speaking with SBS News in late April, a month that normally blesses Shark Bay with glassy waters and whispering breezes. Yet today, waves hurl at the helm of Tidal Moon's boat, as the trio of divers repair an anchor damaged by blustering north winds. The narrow strip of beach in Denham, a suburb in Shark Bay, is tangled with churned-up seaweed fronds, and only a handful of opportunistic fishers cast snaking lines from the promenade's jetties.
Poor weather conditions have halted the team from harvesting sea cucumbers this week, but on a typical day, the divers take a two-hour voyage to Steep Point, Australia's most western tip. There, they search the seafloor, collecting sea cucumbers by hand. Once their net bags are filled with around 300-500 leathery sea cucumbers, they return to shore.
Sea cucumbers have small, tubular feet that they use for both movement and feeding. Source: Supplied / Tidal Moon These sea cucumbers — mostly of the deep-water redfish variety — are dried and sent to a Singaporean partner for export throughout South-East Asia. Known as bêche de mer, the culinary delicacy is enjoyed in Chinese soups and eaten raw or fermented in Japan.
'Equality of access'
Sea cucumber is not a staple of Australian cuisine, although a 2024 AgriFutures report projected prices to "surge" as demand increases. The global market value of sea cucumber is around $6.8 billion for 200,000 tonnes, but Australia is yet to capitalise on this industry, with its annual wild catches accounting for less than 400 tonnes.
Sea cucumbers are 'benthic' creatures, meaning they dwell on the ocean floor, and are found in both shallow and deep sea environments. Source: Supplied / Tidal Moon Tidal Moon hopes to get ahead of the curve and eventually expand into aquaculture — farming sea cucumbers in a controlled environment. Wear's eyes are on markets in Australia, the US and Europe, where the invertebrate is a burgeoning superfood. Due to sea cucumbers' high collagen, amino acid and vitamin content, they can be milled into capsules for the lucrative biomedical market. Tidal Moon is currently partnering with researchers at CSIRO to investigate the potential therapeutic properties of sea cucumbers, which could have applications in cancer and diabetes treatments. Later this year, Tidal Moon plans to launch a cosmetics line of sea-cucumber-infused moisturisers and skincare serums. But to accomplish these big-picture plans, Indigenous businesses need "equality of access", Wear says.
Tidal Moon initially struggled to enter the Western Australian sea cucumber fishery in 2017, as the wholesalers Tasmanian Seafoods held a monopoly on sea cucumber licences in the state. Although Australia's fishing industry is worth a sizable $3.6 billion, Indigenous people have traditionally been excluded from the sector due to heavy regulations and high costs.
Tidal Moon's research partnership aims to explore the medicinal and nutritional potential of sea cucumbers, as well as their marine conservation applications. Source: SBS News / Otis Filley Wear says he wants to create a self-sufficient Indigenous business, one that doesn't rely on a trickle of grants or government funding.
"We're this small little Indigenous business, on its own back, trying to change the world," Wear says.
Preserving Gathaagudu At this stage, Wear's priority is to provide a sustainable future for young people in his community. When docked, Tidal Moon's boat, Marine 2, becomes an unofficial gathering place for the Malgana community, with waves of people coming aboard to learn about diving or operating a vessel. "If you get young kids involved, it gives them opportunity and inspires them. Especially men, a lot of the men end up in jail," Wear says.
"I grew up without a father, so I know what it's like. I hope we can keep many more in the family."
Michael Wear (far left) hopes to expand Tidal Moon's operations. Source: SBS News / Otis Filley Alex Dodd is a Malgana and Amangu man and the company's lead diver. At 28 years old, Dodd represents the next generation of Indigenous leadership in the sea cucumber harvesting industry. But his role at Tidal Moon isn't just employment — it's a continuation of cultural heritage and knowledge. "Being able to eventually have my own children and teaching them the same way he [McNeair] taught me is a privilege," he reflects, noting how Tidal Moon's mission bridges past traditions with future generations. Dodd's habit of combing the seafloor for the rosy shimmer of mother of pearl has earned him the nickname 'bowerbird' among his fellow divers. Strolling barefoot through his house, a manta ray chain glinting at his neck, he points to a collection of conch shells, cowries, cone snails, sand dollars and black-lip pearls. Every surface of his home highlights his deep connection to the land and waters. "Gathaagudu is a healing place. It was like something was missing. When I moved here, it just clicked," he says.
"Now I can continue to preserve it for the next generation."
Alex Dodd shows a shell collected during a dive in the waters of Shark Bay, where he recently purchased a home with his partner. Source: SBS News / Otis Filley This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.