September 23, 2025 marks two essential holidays: Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Fat Bear Week.
Every fall, rangers at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve maintain observe of the brown bears who stay there, noting how a lot weight every one features forward of getting into their winter hibernation interval. The extra kilos a bear packs on, the higher probability they’ve of surviving their six-month hibernation.
But the contest isn’t nearly which bear features the most weight.
Rather, it’s about attempting to “find the bear who best exemplifies fatness and success,” as per the nationwide park’s web site.
The vote is accomplished in a March Madness-style bracket, with winners of earlier rounds going up towards one another till just one chonker stays. While there is a separate contest, Fat Bear Junior, for youthful bears, Fat Bear Week is the major occasion.
Fat Bear Week set to kick off
“You can vote for the bear who is fattest, you can vote for the bear whose story touches your heart – it’s up to you,” Naomi Boak, a media ranger for Katmai National Park, instructed NCS’s Polo Sandoval. “The bears don’t know who you voted for.”
This 12 months’s crop of ultra-ursines embody two earlier winners: 32 Chunk, a mammoth male who is hoping to make a comeback after a damaged jaw and 128 Grazer, a fearsome fisher who gained the Fat Bear Week crown in 2023 and 2024 and whose cub simply snagged the Fat Bear Week junior title.
Other hopefuls are 503, an up-and-coming male who has confirmed a outstanding capacity to get together with others, 26, a feminine who is devotedly elevating cubs after dropping a earlier litter, and 602, whose tendency to nap in the river mid-fishing expedition has garnered comparisons to Homer Simpson and the nickname “flotato.”
Voting begins at 9:00 am EST on Tuesday, and the winner will likely be introduced on September 30.
There’s some excellent news forward of this 12 months’s contest. Boak experiences that the bears had extra salmon than ever earlier than to feast on in the Brooks River this 12 months.
In addition to casting their votes, bear lovers can donate to The Otis Fund, whose proceeds go towards defending Katmai National Park and Preserve, which is the fourth-largest nationwide park in the United States.
It is named in honor of Otis, the famend chonkster who was the recipient of the first-ever Fat Bear Week title and went on to win the crown once more in 2016, 2017 and 2021. He has not been seen in a number of years and is presumed lifeless, however his legacy lives on.
“He was our Zen master,” Boak mentioned about Otis. “He was recorded catching 42 fish in an hour. He deserved to be champion.”
Now in its eleventh 12 months, Fat Bear Week really started as Fat Bear Tuesday in 2014. To the glad shock of park rangers, about 1,700 folks voted for his or her favourite bears.
That spurred Katmai employees to broaden the occasion to final a full week, including common updates, a “Hall of Champions,” and a stay feed on their web site.
Compare that to 2024, the place greater than 1.4 million folks from 60 nations solid votes, in accordance with Boak.
“It’s grown enormously,” she mentioned. “Like the bears.”