Backing the people already restoring Pacific Islands.

Moonjelly builds long-term relationships with Pacific leaders already caring for their places - working alongside them, connecting knowledge and culture across islands, and backing the locally led work that grows from that trust.

Read the Moonjelly Funding Declaration

Jellyfish reflecting Indigenous approaches to food systems, ocean health, and community resilience in the Pacific

Across the Pacific, Indigenous and local communities care for reefs, fisheries, food systems, freshwater, and land as parts of one living system. Their knowledge comes from generations of living with and caring for place.

These systems face growing pressure, while the people who understand them are often underfunded and overstretched. The problem is not a lack of wisdom. It is the way support flows.

Moonjelly connects trusted leaders with one another and with the funding, science, and practical support that can help their work continue. We enter by invitation. Our partners set the direction.

Moon jellyfish representing non-extractive Indigenous knowledge systems supporting ocean health, food security, and community well-being

Jellyfish symbolizing Indigenous-led ocean stewardship and long-term ecological restoration across Pacific communities

We begin with trust.

We take time in place to understand what matters to the people already doing it. We follow our partners’ priorities, and stay with the work as relationships deepen.

Listen … to learn and build trust

Follow … the visions and priorities of our partners

Connect … people who can learn directly from one another

Move … funding and practical support with less burden

Commit … for the long term, beyond individual projects and grant cycles

Jellyfish used to convey Indigenous research partnerships focused on Pacific ecosystems, ancestral decision-making, and restoration

Moon jellyfish symbolizing trust-based Indigenous conservation and long-term stewardship of land, sea, and community health

Moonjelly Academy

Knowledge Into Action

Moonjelly Academy is where relationships turn into work on the ground.

Through exchanges, field-based learning, applied research, and long-term collaboration, partners put ancestral and contemporary knowledge into practice around food systems, stewardship, governance, and other community-defined priorities.

The Academy supports communities to:

Share knowledge directly across communities, cultures, and languages
Apply research and technical tools in service of local priorities
Support Indigenous leadership and decision-making
Restore and care for land, sea, and food systems
Build lasting relationships across communities

Trust compounds. Partners bring in other people they trust, new relationships form, and the work moves into new places. What began with relationships in Rarotonga has grown into work across the Cook Islands, Taiwan, French Polynesia, and Hawaiʻi.

Moonjelly symbolizing restoration and rejuvenation in the ocean

Research from our network

Our Navigators and collaborators explore how knowledge is shared and how place is understood.

ICES Journal of Marine Science · 2025

Sharing knowledge, building trust

Moonjelly Navigators, Linwood Pendleton, and collaborators reflect on sharing Indigenous knowledge and academic science - and the relationships, listening, and time it takes.

Read the paper

International Journal of Geographical Information Science · 2026

Relational Objects

Moonjelly Navigator Teriitutea Quesnot explores mapping that begins with relationships, opening new ways for spatial tools to reflect Indigenous understandings of place.

Read the paper

Housed at Moonjelly

The Ocean KAN is a global, trust-based network connecting people across cultures, languages, sectors and disciplines to share knowledge, build relationships and support ocean action.

A member of the Future Earth Network, the Ocean KAN is self-organizing and decentralized, with participation and shared leadership at its core. Moonjelly serves as its fiscal sponsor, while Moonjelly co-founder and Science Director Dr. Linwood Pendleton serves as the network’s Global Coordinator.

Explore the Ocean KAN →

The Ocean KAN

Moonjelly Navigator Circle

Indigenous-guided

The Navigator Circle is a group of Indigenous leaders, academics, and knowledge holders who help guide Moonjelly’s priorities, relationships, and direction.

The Navigator Fund helps turn that guidance into action by moving financial and technical resources toward priorities defined by Circle members and their communities.

Read our Declaration to learn how Moonjelly is redefining trust-based funding for Indigenous ocean action

We are Moonjelly.