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The recovery of communities of predatory fishes within a no‐take marine reserve after the eradication of illegal fishing provides an opportunity to examine the role of sharks and other large‐bodied mesopredatory fishes in structuring reef fish communities. We used baited remote underwater video stations to investigate whether an increase in sharks was associated with a change in structure of the mesopredatory fish community at Ashmore Reef, Western Australia. We found an almost fourfold increase in shark abundance in reef habitat from 0.64 hr⁻¹ ± 0.15 SE in 2004, when Ashmore Reef was being fished illegally, to 2.45 hr⁻¹ ± 0.37 in 2016, after eight years of full‐time enforcement of the reserve. Shark recovery in reef habitat was accompanied by a two and a half‐fold decline in the abundance of small mesopredatory fishes (≤50 cm TL) (14.00 hr⁻¹ ± 3.79 to 5.6 hr⁻¹ ± 1.20) and a concomitant increase in large …