What to know about Fat Bear Week, and the brawny bruins ready to battle for the title

AThe brawny bruins on the Alaska Peninsula are ready to brawl it out to see which will win this year’s fattest bear title in the wildly popular annual online voting contest known as Fat Bear Week.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The brawny bruins on the Alaska Peninsula are ready to brawl it out to see which will win this year’s fattest bear title in the wildly popular annual online voting contest known as Fat Bear Week.

The main event featuring adult bears starts next week, but first up Thursday is what the National Park Service calls a “chubby cubby appetizer.” Fat Bear Jr. voters can cast ballots through Friday for their favorite adolescent ursine, with the winner advancing to the big show.

The contest, which began in 2014, is meant to showcase the resiliency of the brown bears, which pack on the pounds each fall to survive the harsh winter by gorging on salmon at Brooks River in remote Katmai National Park and Preserve. People can watch the bears on livestream cameras.

“It really is an opportunity for people to think about how bears survive, what they need to do to survive, what the ecosystem provides them and look at their individual success stories, as well,” said explore.org naturalist Mike Fitz, who started the contest when he was a ranger at Katmai.

This year’s sockeye run has been abundant, so voters can expect some especially corpulent contestants.