Fat Bear Drama

The Fat Bear Week bracket reveal has been delayed to October 1st due to an incident at the river today. This post will summarize the situation in one convenient spot.

⚠️ This post will contain graphic bear-on-bear violence. Yes, actually. ⚠️

The Incident

Around 9:30 AM local Alaskan time, bear 469 and 402 got into a fight at the river mouth. This was observed on the Kat's River View livestream.

469 engaged 402 while they were swimming. After fighting for a bit, they paused. 402 disengaged by swimming away. 469 looked like he was going to leave her alone, but then decided to persue. The park rangers described it as predatory behaviour; 469 had decided he had the advantage and could use her for calories.

469 persued, caught up to 402, and continued the attack. Ultimately, 469 overpowered her and forced her beneath the water. 402 is believed to have drowned after a drawn-out, 10-minute struggle.

469 then dragged the body from the river into the woods, likely intending it to be a food cache. Not long after, Katmai rangers determined that 469 had been displaced by 32 Chunk, who was now guarding the remains.

The park's stream has some of the footage with commentary from Mike Fitz, the resident naturalist for explore.org. YouTube user OLDBEAR44 has created two clips of the stream documenting the full incident.

• Bear 469 Fight Conversation by explore.org
• Full fight as clipped by OLDBEAR44
• Fight aftermath, as clipped by OLDBEAR44

Here is a map harvested from the explore.org stream. They marked the 1/2/3 locations, but I've annotated them. Locations one and two correspond to the full fight & fight aftermath videos. The third location does not have a webcam covering it, but the explore.org stream reported park rangers observed the body, 469, and 32 Chunk here.

This is a dangerous situation: a bear guarding a valuable food cache is not unlike a mother bear protecting her cubs. On the stream, Mike Fitz said several times that 402's remains represent thousands and thousands of calories -- a real prize for any bear.

Fortunately, the lodge has closed for the season. The area south of the lodge has been closed to visitors and rangers; better safe than sorry.

Analysis

402 was a contender in Fat Bear Week 2023, and 32 Chunk is a beloved competitor. I don't think 469 has been in the tournament.

But: as far as I know, this is an unprecedented situation. No Fat Bear Week contestant has ever eaten another one. It's likely that the bracket reveal had to be delayed to find a replacement for 402; I am now wondering if they'll exclude 32 Chunk as well, given his ... involvement ... in the incident.

But perhaps not. This may be an Air Bud situation: it's never occured to anyone to make a rule against eating your competition, so it's OK?

What I do know is that this is massively inconvenient! My Fat Bear Madness contest already had a pretty tight period in which you can make predictions. I'm running this at the office and really needed the day between the bracket reveal and the tournament starting for people to make their predictions.

Conclusion

Unrelated to today's incident: 480 Otis has not emerged from hibernation this year. It's possible he's just decided to sleep through 2024¹, but it's equally likely that he has not survived the winter.

It's been a tragic year for Fat Bear Week, so I want to sign off by saying: rest in salmon, 480 Otis & 402 🫡