ANCHORAGE, Alaska \u2014 After a summer spent packing away sockeye salmon, Alaska\u2019s heftiest brown bears are ready to throw their weight around.<\/p>\n
Online voting began Tuesday for Fat Bear Week<\/a>, the annual contest that pits the rotund residents of Katmai National Park and Preserve against each other for the title of most oversized ursine.<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s winner, Chunk \u2014 known officially as Bear 32 \u2014 is hungry for a repeat. Chunk\u2019s weight in 2025 was estimated at 1,200 pounds, which gave him a narrow victory. This year he\u2019s back and facing corpulent competition like Gully \u2014 aka Bear 903 \u2014 the offspring of two-time champion Grazer.<\/p>\n The contest, which is in its 12th year, celebrates the resilience of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state\u2019s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands. The animals gorge on the abundant salmon that return to the Brooks River, sometimes chomping the fish in midair as they make their way upstream to spawn.<\/p>\n The event this year features 16 bears facing off in a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament. All voting is done online at www.fatbearweek.org<\/a>, with the winner declared Sept. 29. The public can watch the bears on explore.org\u2019s livestream cameras before deciding on their favorite.<\/p>\n \u201cFat bears are successful bears,\u201d the nonprofit\u2019s website says. They gorge on salmon starting in late June in order to accumulate fat reserves to prepare for winter hibernation, when they do not eat or drink and lose one-third of their body weight.<\/p>\n Adult male brown bears typically weigh 600 to 900 pounds (about 270 to 410 kilograms) in midsummer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon \u2014 each eats as many as 30 fish per day \u2014 large males can weigh well over 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms). Females are about one-third smaller.<\/p>\n Voters in the online contest can review before-and-after photos of the bears, lean at the start of summer and fattened at the end. The bears are not actually weighed \u2014 imagine that process \u2014 and some fans choose their favorite based on their looks or backstory.<\/p>\n To be featured in the contest, the bears must frequent the area around the river.<\/p>\n