Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) is a large multiuse marine park that generates gradients of fishing pressure and human interaction (Rizzari et al, 2015), making it an ideal system in which to investigate resultant changes in fish behaviour. The management system of the GBRMP includes areas open to fishing and permanent spatial closures, which comprise two different levels. of protection from humans: no-take and no-entry zones. Fishing is prohibited in both clo-ure types, but no zones are strictly enforced human exclusion areas, whereas non-extractive activities (e.g. diving) are permitted in no-take zones. The most heavily targeted reef fish species in the GBRMP is the common coral trout (Plectiopomus leopardus, otherwise known as leopard coral grouper), which comprises approximately 52% of spearfishers' catch (Frisch et al., 2012; Leigh et al., 2014). Coral trout are thus an ideal study species to document changes in behaviour due to fishing pressure and varying degrees of human interaction. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of fishing and human interaction on behaviour of coral trout. Specifically, we investigated two research questions: