The Navy wants to expand the areas off the Northwest coast where it uses sonar, despite objections from environmentalists that this is harmful to whales and other marine mammals.

On Tuesday the Navy wraps up a series of public meetings in Northwest coastal towns as it pursues permits to test and train with sonar in a larger area of the Pacific.

The Navy says sonar is a critical tool to protect national security along the Pacific Coast.

“Without the use and the training of active sonar we can’t find submarines,” says John Mosher the Northwest Environmental program manager for the US Pacific Fleet, “and they are an absolute threat in certain situations to our Navy to our shipping to our coastlines, to a number of different resources that we have.”

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