Fat Bear Week is officially underway at the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. So, take a break from all of the stressful stuff going on in the world for a little while and check out some of the most famous bears in U.S. history. In fact, we encourage you to kick back, relax, and pop on a stream to check out this year’s candidates for Fat Bear Week.
For the uninitiated, Fat Bear Week takes place every year in late September and early October. (It’s like Shark Week, but more wholesome.) At the beginning of the year, the brown bears at Katmai leave hibernation and are photographed with their svelte post-hibernation bods. As you can imagine, a whole winter of sleeping and not eating makes for a very skinny bear. Over the course of the season, the bears eat and eat, and they put on quite a few pounds. During the annual salmon run, the brown bears gorge on high-calorie salmon to beef up for the upcoming winter. In fact, some of these chonky boys and girls gain as much as 1,000 pounds or more over the course of the year.
Then, around this time every year, they are photographed again, all fat and ready for another winter of hibernation. During this time, the Katmai National Park and Preserve hosts Fat Bear Week, where people can vote for their favorite fat bears before they head out for hibernation. Voters are encouraged to meet the bears first, and you can learn more about their stories and identification at the National Park Service’s Explore.org website.
I’ll admit, I have a sweet spot for Chunk. Homeboy broke his jaw, a lifelong condition for a bear since Katmai brown bears don’t receive veterinary treatment. Despite his new disability, Chunk managed to re-learn how to eat salmon and remains one of the largest bears in the whole park. Go Chunk, go!
Fat Bear Week: Tune into livestreams of all the ursine action
There are eight total live streams to watch the bears fish out of the river. That includes seven river shots and one underwater camera that catches the salmon swimming upstream, although the camera has been known to catch the occasional bear walking or swimming by.
The live streams are all available online via the National Parks Service Explore website and YouTube. Here are the links to each of the Fat Bear Week livestreams on YouTube:
The streams are all free and run almost all the time (night vision kicks in after dark), so you can drop in and see what the bears are up to 24/7.
Fat Bear Week: How to vote for your favorite fat bears
Credit: National Park Service
Voting began for Fat Bear Week on Sept. 18, so the first few rounds are already over. However, there are still a couple of rounds left, and the final voting takes place on Sept. 29 and 30. To vote, head to the explore.org voting page to cast your vote. There is also a pretty sweet bracket you can fill out to predict the winners.
With only a few more days of voting, make sure to check it out and cast your vote for your favorite bear.