Just like nature, Warren Lee Long has a grounding presence.  

Growing up in a green town, Warren came to understand nature as a complex, interconnected system.  

“I grew up in Innisfail. The Reef was my front yard, and the mountains and rivers were my backyard.  

“We had access to everything – it was heaven,” Warren said.

He describes experiencing the Great Barrier Reef as a kind of romance, with each visit deepening his admiration for its complexity.  

“When you’re on the Reef, there’s a sense of being on the frontier and the discovery of something new.

“It hits you in the face and you just can’t take your eyes off it; you just want to dig deeper.

“I think that might be what drove my fascination to always search for what else is there, and to find out what makes it all tick and function.”

That started a lifelong question for Warren: how does it all work?

Spending his weekends exploring local rivers, creeks and the Reef, Warren noticed changes in his environment.

“Our rivers around Innisfail, the North and South Johnstone rivers, would flood every year, with big red flood plumes reaching far out to sea.  

“I’d see people catching incredible numbers of fish from the rivers and the Reef, and strange changes in bait fish populations on the foreshores.

“And I thought, this can’t go on forever – something is not right.  

“I wanted to find out what I could do to help.”

This led Warren to study a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology at James Cook University.

After university, Warren worked as a biologist studying the relationship between juvenile prawns and seagrass meadows. Not much was understood about seagrass meadows in Queensland at the time.  

“I told my boss that to understand the whole system, we need to map how much seagrass we've got.  

“That led to a whole decade of mapping seagrasses up and down the Great Barrier Reef, the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Torres Strait.”

His work surveying seagrasses became an adventure: at times taking him through dangerous and murky waters, alongside sharks, crocodiles and box jellyfish, to uncover truths within the meadows.  

“Despite the risks, it was exciting work – we were discovering many new habitats.”

But the Queensland coastline is thousands of kilometres long, and Warren’s team were tasked with a mammoth job.  

“I felt our little team of four was not enough to cover the whole of Queensland’s seagrass monitoring needs.”

Warren set out to find a solution.

Together with fellow researcher Len Mackenzie, Warren developed Seagrass-Watch, a citizen science program that trains community members to collect and submit scientifically useful data on seagrass meadows.  

Seagrass-Watch was the first of its kind to use the collective power of community to help scientists understand seagrasses.

“I designed it to be a collaborative triangle, between citizens, scientists and government managers.”

Recognising that this multiple-level formula could work on a larger scale, he took the lessons he learned from Seagrass-Watch to the global stage, when he later joined Wetlands International.  

“We had 20 countries, all with internationally important wetlands known as Ramsar sites, and we linked those sites through their migratory bird connections.  

“It created an international site network across four different levels: scientists, non-government organisations, protected area managers and governments — allowing these partners to work together for those key Ramsar wetlands.”  

After spending over a decade working internationally, including several years in Samoa implementing the Coastal and Marine Environment Program for the Pacific Islands region, Warren set his sights back on home soil, where he now works as a Senior Policy Officer at the Reef Authority in Townsville.

“I help develop marine park management policy, strategies and plans, so that our management of the Reef is fit for purpose and adaptive in an era of rapid changes.”  

Working on projects like the Southern Plan of Management, Warren feels privileged to play a role in protecting the World Heritage Area.  

“The Reef is a global and national icon and we’re so fortunate to be able to play a part in helping to ensure its future.”

Always looking ahead, Warren’s advice to students of marine biology is to keep the whole picture in mind.  

“Give yourself the opportunity to observe nature more closely, and keep a whole of system perspective, whether it’s the reef, the rainforest, water catchments, or large socio-ecological systems.

“Never give up digging deeper into what makes this world of humans and nature really work.”