Our current understanding of coral reef resilience relies on the assumption that the herbivorous fish community keeps algae in check across the entire reef. Based on this understanding, assessments of ecological resilience quantify biomass of herbivorous fishes and consider a fish’s presence in an area as a proxy for the spatial extent of algal removal. However, feeding is unlikely to occur homogeneously over a fish’s entire home range. This broad-scale approach appears to be a key weakness in our current evaluations of reef resilience. Especially in recent times of dynamic perturbations on coral reefs, it is critical to understand how feeding by herbivorous fishes is driven by and can respond to small-scale shifts in benthic conditions. To explore space use and density of feeding by herbivorous reef fishes as a new facet of reef resilience, this research utilizes a novel approach using underwater video assays recording the feeding activity of any fishes over replicate 36 m² areas. Findings to date suggest that the cumulative feeding impact of multiple functional groups appears to be spatially focussed, showing high levels of spatial overlap and concentration - with large areas of benthic space remaining functionally untouched.