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Discriminating marine fish assemblages at broad scales can be difficult because of heterogeneity within their habitats, variability in patterns of behaviour and abundance of fish between habitats, and sampling biases in extractive fishing techniques when used across a range of habitats. Remote underwater video stations have recently been developed to help overcome these problems, but the use of bait as an attractant raises questions about bias towards scavengers and predators in samples of fish communities. We compared the ability of baited and unbaited underwater video stations to discriminate between fish assemblages inhabiting distinct benthic habitats in temperate and tropical continental shelf waters in Australia, to help test whether the bait attracted predatory and scavenging species to the video in disproportionate numbers in comparison to other trophic groups, such as herbivores. Data from baited …