Dr Ben Diggles is a consultant marine biologist who specialises in study of the health of aquatic animals and their environment. Dr Diggles has published hundreds of papers and reports over the past 30 years on issues as diverse as parasites and diseases of wild and aquacultured fish and shellfish, national and international biosecurity frameworks, fish welfare, pathogen risk analyses, fish kill investigations and environmental standards for fishing tournaments. He conducts regular peer reviews for a number of scientific journals, including Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, Journal of Aquatic Animal Health, and Aquaculture, and has written fish biology articles for Australian and international fishing magazines since 1995.

Ben is currently the managing director of DigsFish Services Pty Ltd, a private consulting company which he established in 2003 after several years working in New Zealands National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and prior to that, as a manager of recreational fisheries in South Australia.