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Fat Bear Week opens for Alaska’s heavyweight crown. Can Chunk, the 1,200-pound champ, win again?
Fat Bear Week opens for Alaska’s heavyweight crown. Can Chunk, the 1,200 pound champ, win again?. Originally published by Mongabay.
By Associated Press · 2026-09-22T17:20:22.842Z
ANCHORAGE, Alaska AP — After a summer spent packing away sockeye salmon, Alaska’s heftiest brown bears are ready to throw their weight around. Online voting began Tuesday for Fat Bear Week https://apnews.com/article/alaska brown bears fat contest afa9de13cf8dc98fe2f5499a6a0f6d02 , the annual contest that pits the rotund residents of Katmai National Park and Preserve against each other for the title of most oversized ursine. Last year’s winner, Chunk — known officially as Bear 32 — is hungry for a repeat. Chunk’s weight in 2025 was estimated at 1,200 pounds, which gave him a narrow victory. This year he’s back and facing corpulent competition like Gully — aka Bear 903 — the offspring of two time champion Grazer. 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’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands. Fat Bear Week was started in 2014 as an interactive way to inform the public about brown bears, the coastal cousins of grizzlies. 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 http://www.fatbearweek.org/ , with the winner declared Sept. 29. The public can watch the bears on explore.org’s livestream cameras https://explore.org/ before deciding on their favorite. “Fat bears are successful bears,” the nonprofit’s website says. They gorge on the abundant salmon that return to the Brooks River starting in late June in order to accumulate fat reserves, sometimes chomping the fish in midair as they make their way upstream to spawn. 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 — each eats as many as 30 fish per day — large males can weigh well over 1,000 pounds 454 kilograms . Females are about one third smaller. During winter hibernation, the bears do not eat or drink and lose one third of their body weight. 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 — imagine that process — and some fans choose their favorite based on their looks or backstory. To be featured in the contest, the bears must frequent the area around the river. The live cameras at Brooks Falls captured the moments in 2024 when mother bear 128 Grazer’s https://apnews.com/article/fat bear week brown grizzly salmon c256ca6313fcd95aa198224ca77160a8 cub slipped over the waterfall and floated into the fishing spot occupied by Chunk, who attacked and injured the cub. Grazer fought Chunk, but the cub ultimately died https://apnews.com/article/alaska fat bear contest winner grazer 2887949cd304cca96a3d8acbeb61095e . After the dramatic fight, voting fans handed Grazer a victory over Chunk. Then Chunk returned in 2025 to take the title. Banner image: Bear number 32, Chunk, is an estimated 1,200 pound plus bear. Image courtesy of E. Johnston, National Park Service.