Chunk, a 1,200-pound bear with a broken jaw, wins Alaska's popular Fat
Bear Week contest
[October 01, 2025]
By CEDAR ATTANASIO and MARK THIESSEN
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Chunk, a towering brown bear with a broken jaw,
swept the competition Tuesday in the popular Fat Bear Week contest — his
first win after narrowly finishing in second place three previous years.
The annual online competition allows viewers to follow 12 bears in
Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve on live webcams and cast
ballots in a bracket-style, single-elimination tournament that lasts a
week. Chunk — known officially as Bear 32 — beat out Bear 856, who
doesn't have a nickname, in the final bracket, according to totals
posted on the organizers' website.
Chunk’s weight was estimated at 1,200 pounds by contest organizers.
While they do not weigh individual bears during the contest because of
safety concerns, Chunk and others have had their density scanned to
bolster weight estimates in the past using laser technology called LIDAR.
“Despite his broken jaw, he remains one of the biggest, baddest bears at
Brooks River,” said Mike Fitz, a naturalist for explore.org. Fitz said
Chunk likely hurt his jaw in a fight with another bear.
The contest is wildly popular. This year it attracted over 1.5 million
votes from fans who watched the ursines gorge on a record run of fall
salmon as they fished in the Brooks River about 300 miles (483
kilometers) from Anchorage.
It is the largest glut of salmon in the living memories of the bears or
the humans who have been running the Fat Bear Week contest since 2014,
according to Katmai Conservancy spokesperson Naomi Boak.
That abundance “decreased conflict in the river since salmon were
readily available,” Boak said in an email. In Tuesday's announcement,
Katmai National Park ranger Sarah Bruce estimated around 200,000 salmon
made their way up Brooks River.
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This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 901 at
the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, on Sept. 12, 2025.
(E Johnston/National Park Service via AP)
In leaner years, the toughest bears jockey for the best fishing
spots at Brooks Falls, where the salmon converge in a bottleneck and
leap from the water as they fight their way upstream to spawn.
This year, Brooks Falls fishing spots were often empty as bears
hunted up and down stream. There was even room for humans to fish.
At one point Monday, one of the Explore.org live cameras showed two
people calmly casting fishing rods along the river even as brown
bears plodded upstream and downstream from them.
Voters in the online contest could 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 — that would be too dangerous and
difficult — and some fans choose their favorite based on looks or
backstory.
The live cameras at Brooks Falls captured the moments in 2024 when
mother bear 128 Grazer ’s 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. After the
dramatic fight, voting fans handed Grazer a victory over Chunk.
Fat Bear Week was started in 2014 as an interactive way to inform
the public about brown bears, the coastal cousins of grizzlies. They
spend summers catching and eating as many salmon as possible so they
can fatten up for hibernation in Alaska's cold, lean winters.
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Attanasio reported from Seattle.
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