Voters have a lot to weigh: leadership qualities, policy agenda, experience. But over the past decade, one race has been defined by the amount of wild salmon that can be smashed into a mouth.
You might call them single-issue voters, but really they’re just voting for the bulkiest bear on the ballot.
Fat Bear Week, the annual contest that celebrates feeding season at Katmai National Park in Alaska, began as one-day experiment for park rangers to engage with visitors. It has spiraled into an annual weeklong competition with a March Madness-like bracket and mentality.
It’s all thanks to a live webcam at Brooks Falls, a favorite salmon run in the park, that allows virtual visitors to observe competitors like Grazer, Chunk, the aptly named 747 and about a dozen others feasting on the local delicacy, growing from runty to hulk-like in a matter of months.
“There are very few places in the world where you can go watch wild bears and know them as individuals,” said Mike Fitz, a former park ranger who founded the contest in 2014. The contest, he said, “celebrates the success of brown bears and it tells their stories — the challenges and the difficulties they face to get fat and survive.”