Fishing is rapidly removing sharks and other large predators from coral reefs, but at present we lack a complete understanding of the ecological role of these predators in such environments. It is known that sharks are likely to exert strong ecological effects on their prey either directly through consumption, or indirectly by inducing antipredator-or “risk effects”- behaviours, however direct experimental evidence of such behaviours are rare. Using life-size models of threatening (reef sharks) and non-threatening (turtles, small fishes) taxa, we examined the impact of perceived predation threat on the feeding behaviour and spatial use by mesopredatory reef fishes in a coral reef environment. Preliminary results show that the presence of a model reef shark increased the time taken for mesopredatory species to consume prey items and suppressed feeding at larger distances from the reef edge. A model coral trout did not increase the time taken for mesopredatory reef fishes to consume all available prey items compared to a negative control (no model). The use of life-size models has provided some of the first evidence for the existence of risk effects caused by large, high-order predators on mesopredatory fishes in coral reef environments.