Fat Bear Week has a Winner!

Source: Twitter - https://twitter.com/KatmaiNPS

Posted by: Jeremy & Amanda | Wednesday, October 12th, 2022 ( 7:39am)

The ballots have been cast, and even through some erroneous entries, Fat Bear Week has a winner and it's a BIG one!

Congrats to Bear 747! Not only is he HUGE...he's also quite dominant!

"A park ranger once described bear 747 as being "more hippopotamus than bear at times." He's the largest bear many Katmai viewers have ever seen (he tips the scale at some 1,400 pounds). He gobbled thousands of fish this summer. He grows so fat he has trouble walking. He's even huge when he emerges from hibernation. He's now a two-time Fat Bear Week champ. And at over 20 years old, the aging bear seems to be getting even larger.

"747 returns to Brooks River [where this population of bears feast on salmon] every summer as a giant and just keeps getting bigger," writes Mike Fitz, a former Katmai park ranger and currently a resident naturalist for explore.org, the organization that livestreams the bears in the summer and fall. Fitz has watched 747 eat 15 large sockeye salmon (some 67,000 calories) over just a few hours."