Brown Bears of Katmai ALaska
In the vast, remote southwest corner of Alaska, Katmai National Park hosts the annual Alaska sockeye salmon run, when millions of salmon begin the weeks-long trip to their original spawning grounds (where they were hatched). This run of brightly colored salmon is so massive it can be seen from the air! When the salmon arrive they will spawn and die. However, many of them don’t make it that far because they are intercepted along their journey by hungry bears.
Brown bears (Ursus arctos) are normally solitary animals. In late summer they enter an extra-hungry phase called hyperphagia, triggered by shorter days, hormones, and millions of incoming, tasty salmon. The bears head to the rivers, especially to places where the fish pause either to re-orient their internal GPS or to surmount physical obstacles - like the famous Brooks Falls. When the bears arrive they post up in their favorite “fishing spots” where they find themselves in close proximity to a large number of other hungry bears. Bear antics ensue! The boys make noise at each other, the kids and the adults do a lot of wrestling, and the females bring their cubs and teach them to fish – keeping a watchful eye on large males that will kill cubs that aren’t their own. Nature can be rude.
Every bear develops its own style of fishing. Some dunk their heads underwater, some catch fish midair as they try to jump up the waterfalls, and some hilariously make huge splashes pouncing on fish. Each salmon has approximately 4000 calories and bears can eat up to 40 per day! During the weeks of gorging at the all-you-can-eat salmon buffet the bears will grow to truly enormous proportions – gaining as much as 500 pounds (they max out at around 1200 pounds) – all in anticipation of winter hibernation. All of this makes for amazing photo opportunities!
Larry visited the Katmai bears in September 2021 with our dear friend Bob Harvey of Nature Photography Adventures. Weather issues made for a very challenging photo shoot, and as a result many of the images were not up to Larry’s preferred standards. Now I’ve come along – with very rudimentary photo processing skills – and have put together what I see as the best images that I think Larry would like. As my skills and technology improve, I might give these photos another look in the future. I truly love these photos of the bears and I hope you will too!
