Hope you filled out your brackets: Fat Bear Week is in full swing. During the annual competition, fans weigh in as 12 of the bulkiest bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve are figuratively pitted against one another. To learn more, we spoke to the tournament’s founder, Mike Fitz, and Katmai media ranger, Naomi Boak…

Q: How did the idea for Fat Bear Week first come about?

Fitz: In 2014, I was a ranger at Katmai, and we had already been doing the webcams for a couple years … At Brooks River, we have this great opportunity to see how bears’ body mass changes from early to late summer [as they prepare for hibernation] … One of the viewers posted side-by-side screen captures [showing] how fat [a bear] got. Something in my brain clicked and I thought, Wouldn’t it be cool if we let people choose the fattest and most successful bear of the year? … We threw together this thing called “Fat Bear Tuesday” on Facebook, and it was extremely well received. The engagement was off the charts compared to anything we’d done. That day, I decided it needed to be a whole week to allow more people to participate ... I thought it’d be a goofy thing that the park did each year, and that’s still true, but its popularity isn’t something I’d ever envisioned.

Q: Why do you think that is? People are terrified of bears, but ironically, get so excited about Fat Bear Week.

Fitz: Bears are powerful animals — they possess a great amount of strength and speed. Of course, they have the potential to be dangerous, but we as humans relate to them in a lot of ways. We can relate to how devoted mother bears are to raising their offspring and making sure their cubs are safe. A lot of us admire their ability to essentially become seasonally obese, then sleep through the wintertime. Every year, I see lots of comments from people wishing they could also sleep through winter … And of course they’re big, furry animals.

Q: Part of the fun is learning about the bears. How do you get to know them well enough to write their bios?

Boak: We’re living with those bears for five months. So we’re observing them [in person]. We’re getting to know their histories, behaviors, and interactions. We’re watching the bear cams ... which are like five soap operas in a day … We really get to know the bears as individuals, and they are individuals. They have different personalities ... and they face different challenges, which influence their character and role — whether they’re just figuring things out as a teenager of the bear world or are a dominant bear that gets to choose the best fishing spots without interference. 

Q: Do you ever have trouble keeping track of which bear is which?

Boak: Sometimes we can keep track, and sometimes we can’t. We recognize bears by a number of physical features — their ears, noses, body size, scars — or behavior ... You can’t go by the coat color because it can change from light to dark over the season … As a ranger, we learn how to say ‘I don’t know’ a lot.

Q: Which bears have you been rooting for this year?

Fitz: Bear 128, who’s nicknamed Grazer … She’s not raising cubs this year, but she is a fierce and devoted mother bear. She’s probably the toughest female bear that I’ve ever seen. At times, it seems like another bear just has to look in her family’s direction, and bam, she’s on top of them. She’s also the best angler on the river — she has the agility and speed to catch fish virtually anywhere and can chase salmon down. She’s gotten really fat and is definitely worthy of many people’s votes … Though Bear 747 “Colbert” is still a giant. He won last year, but I think it’s time for a new champion ... [which could end up being] Bear 32 “Chunk.” It might be his Fat Bear Week to lose. His belly is so gigantic, it nearly touches the ground — he’s had a really great year.

Boak: We have a lot of females in the bracket this year. I always root for them because they have such a hard job raising cubs. It takes so much energy to do that. [But] I really adore the feisty floof of a cub that won this year’s Fat Bear Junior, Bear 806 Jr. That little titan probably went from 1 pound to 70 pounds in less than a year. I [also] think Bear 435 “Holly” is looking like the Michelin Man again. She doesn’t have cubs this year, so she is really fat … And we can’t forget about the fan favorite, 480 Otis. He’s one of our oldest bears, and quite frankly, I didn’t think he was going to return this year … He came back in late July, and he was skinnier and more frail than we’ve ever seen him … But, the guy knows how to fish. He put on weight, and he is a fat, healthy bear.