Yesterday, I was trying to get a voice memo out of my Apple watch - on which the recording was made. I switched from Apple last year. My cousin had an iPhone. Apple would not let me transfer the voice memo out of their eco-system. It's not on my iCloud and the watch can no longer be paired with any other iOS device (even temorarily with authentication to transfer a file)...unless the iPhone is registered to me. This is malicious compliance in the name of security.
And mind you, I own 3 Apple devices - 2 Macs and 1 iPad and the watch can't connect to any of those. I must be forced to buy a $1000 device just because I made the mistake of recording something on their watch. We need more regulation because of things like this and I would absolutely hate to live in a society where this is the norm.
If you are not using iCloud, you could try activating it (you get 5 gigs for free IIRC) and switching off everything besides the Voice Memos app. Then you should see the recording on your Mac, and should be able to export it from there. Definitely a shitty workaround, but you might be able to make it work?