Brooks Falls - Katmai National Park, Alaska, USA

Brown bears crowd into the white water at Brooks Falls in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, waiting for sockeye salmon to leap the 6-foot (1.8 m) ledge on their way upstream to spawn. The biggest bears claim the lip of the falls, while younger ones fish the pools below and gulls wait for scraps.

Each summer, hundreds of thousands of sockeye surge up the Brooks River from Bristol Bay, and dozens of bears gather to feast. A bear can eat more than 30 salmon a day, packing on fat for the long winter, so by autumn many look far bigger than they did in June.

The cam runs on solar power and is live from late June into the fall, while the bears are fishing, then goes quiet over the winter. Katmai was first protected in 1918 after the huge eruption of Novarupta created the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Did You Know? Fat Bear Week, an online contest where viewers vote for the fattest bear at Brooks Falls, began in 2014 and now draws more than a million votes each fall.

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