The water roars as it falls down the cascade. Thick green trees sit at each side. The water is a dark, grayish blue, with hints of red as the salmon come up the river. The bears sit and wait for these tasty snacks to fly right into their open mouths. Their round ears, brown eyes, and big black nose will be the first thing these salmon see when they manage to jump over the waterfall. The bears must prepare for hibernation, and that means eating as much as they can. These large, brown, oval bodies, swaying with their weight as they walk around the river, look a lot different than they did this summer. This is what the millions of people who watch these bears are here for—their weight gain for the winter is what will crown them champion. This large river is the stage for the greatest wildlife competition at Katmai National Park, Fat Bear Week.
Fat Bear Week is a competition held by Katmai National Park, Alaska, which celebrates the feeding season for the brown bears there. Fans follow along to an online webcam, watching and rooting for their favorite large bear. Bears are placed in a March Madness style bracket, and viewers vote. The website, hosted on Explore.org, simply tells fans “For each match-up, vote for the bear you believe best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears.” Katmai has four million acres and is home to more than 2,200 brown bears—one of the largest populations in the world. The tournament is only open to bears that frequent Brooks Falls during both summer and fall, since that’s where the webcams for the tournament are located. Many bears lined up to feast on the salmon there, but this year only 12 bears got the chance to compete for the title of fattest bear.
For the park rangers, Fat Bear Week starts in July. The staff begins to document the bears in the summer and gather photographs to pick their stunning “before” pictures. A good photo can make or break a bear’s chance at Fat Bear Week. Weeks leading up to the competition, which is usually in late September or early October, the contest organizers discuss what stories they want to highlight from over the summer. People judge the bears by their size, but also by the bear’s story. The bears are seen as individuals with distinct personalities for viewers to look out for. This year’s winner, Chunk, could be recognized by his broken jaw which he received over the summer from a fight with another bear. His success in gaining so much weight despite his injury and his age helped him win the competition.
The competition, which had received over a million votes this year, started as a one-day event on Facebook. It was an experiment for park rangers to engage with visitors dubbed Fat Bear Tuesday in 2014. Mike Fitz, the former park ranger who created the contest, got the idea when browsing one of the bear livestreams. A viewer of the livestream commented on the growth of the bears during their feeding season and presented their own before and after picture of a bear. “Working on the webcam—and even prior to that, just being a ranger at Katmai and talking to people when they were watching the bears—I knew that bears were very charismatic creatures,” Fitz told Mental Floss. Since then, the contest has been an annual weeklong tournament with heavy social media presence. People love watching the bears thrive and as Mike Fitz told the New York Times, “people just like looking at photos of round animals.”
As winter approaches Brooks Falls, the weight these bears have worked so hard to put on will be their advantage. The trees will be coated in white and the once roaring river will freeze. The large brown bears will find themselves tucked away in their dens, hoping their successful fall will mean a successful winter. And Chunk will be celebrating his win until hibernation comes.
