Abstract
Marine top predators play a crucial role in the North Sea ecosystem. Top predators may exert pressure on the lower trophic levels, so called top-down pressure as they feed. On the other hand, changes in the lower trophic levels may eventually propagate through the system and influence these top predators, causing for example changes in population or distribution. Top predators are therefore frequently used as ecosystem sentinels. Historically, humans have heavily depleted the higher trophic levels in the marine environment. Direct hunting has been the main cause of decrease of top predators in the past centuries. While several marine mammal populations have been recovered from these pressures, human activities at sea including fishing, oil and gas exploration, and the construction of offshore wind farms might again affect the populations, potentially influencing their pivotal role in marine ecosystems. In this report we investigate how Agent-Based Models (ABMs) could potentially be used to predict population-level responses to changes in the environment, like these types of human activities.