From Sept. 23 to 30, voters from more than 100 countries all came together to vote on a pressing issue: who’s the fattest brown bear at Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska? In a March Madness-esque bracket, voters rabbled and roused on which bear is the biggest, the baddest and the fattest in Fat Bear Week 2025.
Fat Bear Week started 11 years ago as an online event by former park ranger Mike Fitz. Back then, the event only lasted for one day — Fat Bear Tuesday — and garnered 1700 votes on Facebook. Nowadays, millions tune in each year to vote for the fattest bears in Alaska and to watch them hunt for salmon in Brooks River through livecams.
Fat Bear Week is a chance for people to get to know these charismatic creatures better and to celebrate the culmination of these bears’ efforts at getting fat during the summer before they hibernate for the winter. During hibernation, bears do not eat or drink and lose one-third of their body weight, so it’s vital that they amass enough fat reserves to make it through the winter.
According to an interview with The New York Times, Fitz said the contest “celebrates the success of brown bears and it tells their stories — the challenges and the difficulties they face to get fat and survive. But beyond that, people just like looking at photos of round animals.”
Fat Bear Week also showcases the ecosystem of Katmai National Park and Bristol Bay, Alaska. According to Explore.org, this region is home to more brown bears than people and the largest, healthiest runs of sockeye salmon on the planet. As stated by Fritz’s interview, “The salmon are the reason there’s a Fat Bear Week.”
This year, over 200,000 salmon made their way up Brooks River. According to park rangers, it was the largest glut of salmon they’ve seen since the competition started back in 2014.
While the main goal is to be brown and colossal, there are many ways to distinguish a successful bear.
One can go to Explore.org and learn the life stories of each bear competing before casting their all-vital vote, or watch the livecams and decide which bear is the best at hunting for salmon. One could also look at before and after photos of each bear to see who really got the biggest.
This year, 12 bears vied for the crown. There was bear 32, nicknamed Chunk. A large adult male, he has some history in this competition as he finished runner up in 2024 to bear 128, nicknamed Grazer, who is also in the running. Chunk is one of the largest bears around, weighing in at 1,200 pounds. He came to Brooks Falls this summer sporting a recently broken jaw, which rangers believed he got in a fight with another bear.
Bear 856 is another beefy bear who is vying for the title. At one and a half meters tall standing on all four legs, this large adult male is not one to be messed with. He has been Chunk’s main fishing rival throughout the competition as both have been vying for fishing spots in an abundant salmon season.
Grazer is the only repeat winner in this bracket and the defending champion for the last two years. A large adult female, she and Chunk have some lore together: in 2024, one of Grazer’s cubs fell off a waterfall into a fishing spot occupied by Chunk, who attacked and injured the cub. Grazer fought Chunk over it, but the cub eventually died of its wounds. In respect for her Cubs death, people handed the victory to Grazer over Chunk in the final.
This year, it came down to Chunk and 856 in the final for who would become the Fat Bear champion. On Sept. 30, the National Park Service’s X, formerly known as Twitter, account described the matchup as “32 Chunk rolls into the ring with a gut so glorious it could eclipse the Alaskan sun. 856 isn’t here to play. Word on the riverbank is he once stared down a fish, and it swam straight into his mouth. Who’ll take the crown?”
In the end, Chunk accumulated 96,000 votes to 856’s 64,000, as voters resonated with Chunk’s comeback story with his broken jaw. One voter in an explore.org livestream explained her reasoning — “Chunk and I both went through some stuff this summer… and we both have learned to adapt and heal. Thank you Chunk, for being an inspiration.”