The accelerating pace of environmental change in the Anthropocene demands innovative tools to monitor shifts in ecosystem dynamics. Across taxa—from birds to invertebrates—sentinel species have long provided critical insights into ecosystem function, emerging threats to human health, and early signals of environmental change. We propose that marine top predators represent particularly powerful sentinels of ocean processes due to their capacity to traverse ocean basins and integrate food web dynamics across broad spatial and temporal scales. This session seeks to advance the use of marine top predators in this role, review the key traits of species identified as sentinels, and outline how a strategically selected suite of these organisms can enhance both our understanding and management of marine ecosystems. While oceanography and predator ecology have traditionally been treated as distinct disciplines, advancing this approach requires continued interdisciplinary collaboration to decipher what predator behavior, distribution, abundance, and demography can reveal about climate-driven ocean changes. Selecting an appropriate suite of sentinel species could help illuminate ecosystem processes, particularly in data poor regions, but also can inform adaptive strategies for managing marine ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.