Play by Play 7.27.23 | Brooks Live Chat

[Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] hey everyone welcome to Brooks Falls in katmai National Park Alaska one of the best places in the world to watch brown bears fishing for salmon and this is a live broadcast my name is Mike Fitz with explore.org the world's largest live nature cam Network my co-host today for this play-by-play on July 27 2023 is katmai national park ranger Felicia Jimenez who is at Brooks River she's not outside right now she's actually watching the webcams along with us but she has that Rangers perspective on the river walking along it and near it every day so Felicia how are you today I hope the bear activity has been um as as good for you in person as it has been for us on the webcams a lot of stuff happening oh yeah I'm doing well um it's so happy to see so many bears here and it's been a busy week yeah end of July a lot of times Bears start to disperse away from Brooks River and I think a few have done that already but we have been seeing a lot of bears hanging around so plenty to talk about today we have of course our main Brooks Falls camera right now looking at two adult males and then we also have our false locam which is uh adjacent to the to the falls high can the camera we were just looking at before but this is gives us a closer to the ground perspective on the waterfall about 100 yards Downstream the riffles camera shows us the area where a lot of different Bears will fish maybe ones that can't compete up at the at the Falls in that moment and then we'll be going down river as well from time to time uh to the river mouth itself on our Riverwatch camera right here and then also our cats Riverview cam too maybe if some salmon decide to hang out in front of the underwater camera we'll look there as as well and uh of course you know there's always opportunity to go up on top of dumpling Mountain to check out the view there I know we do have new people coming and joining us on our webcams frequently so I want to give everyone the opportunity to to learn a little bit about the geography of the area and where Brooks river is so let's uh like we do at the beginning of our broadcast take a quick tour here in katmai National Park it's located about 300 miles Southwest of Anchorage Alaska on the Alaska Peninsula Brooks river is in the Western and central portion of katmai the river itself is only a mile and a half long it's bisected by Brooks Falls and along with our webcam partner the National Park Service explore.org hosts and maintains several webcams on the river the signal from those webcams is either sent directly to a satellite internet connection or it's sent to a couple of radio repeaters on dumpling mountain and then skipped to the small town of king salmon and the park headquarters about 30 miles away taking a closer look at the river once again the lower half of Brooks River though these are the camera locations so on the left hand side Brooks Falls and the Brooks Falls Cam and the Brooklyn scam and we'll talk about each one of these uh quickly here so looking at some more updated satellite imagery of the area so this is again the lower Brooks River area the Brooks Falls camera is located right at Brooks Falls and it gives us you know again a really great perspective on the area near Brooks Falls but this yellow outlined area is the line of sight for the Brooks Falls camera so every once in a while it may turn Downstream show us a different perspective the riffles camera about 100 yards Downstream of the falls looks uh immediately over the river right in front of it but also Upstream towards the Falls as you can see in the area outlined in white and then near the river mouth the Riverwatch camera gives us a pretty broad line of sight across uh much of the slow-moving areas of the Lower River right before the river empties into Knack neck Lake we also have that underwater camera attached to The Floating Bridge or excuse me not The Floating Bridge that's a force of habit when I'm used to at Brooks River but that's from the the attached to the bridge across Brooks River looking Downstream and then finally we have uh cats Riverview cam named after our long time camera operator or lead camera operator came up cat that gives us a great perspective on the river mouth area you can see outlined in purple so with all of these cameras combined we have a really great perspective on the lower half of Brooks River from the falls down to Knack neck Lake we're also going to try to answer a few viewer questions we're going to talk about the uh the return of Otis which happened yesterday and we have some other Clips uh to show you to break down and to show you as well as what's going on at the Falls so without further Ado Felicia let's let's get to the live footage it looks like right now um many adult males there I see one adult female a smaller female on the far side kind of standing Downstream but a lot of adult males hanging out waiting for fish and it's like the salmon or but there are a lot of Sam yeah the past day or two or more has has been trying to Bear's patience because there haven't been like absolutely huge numbers of salmon moving Upstream into the river so Bears have really had to um to test their patients at the waterfall and elsewhere along the river waiting for fish to come to them Scavenging salmon where they can find that opportunity and each one of these Bears uh it's interesting how they will utilize different fishing positions depending on what happens to be available I think Felicia 151 Walker might be the biggest bear that we see in the frame right now he's the bear that's sitting Downstream of that that big boater but the other um the other bears are going to kind of move around depending on what's available for them mm-hmm um there were about maybe one or two days where the salmon were really jumping and I remember going to the falls and people were very confused because there was a ton of salmon jumping but there weren't very many bears at The Falls and um it's interesting because I tell people on days where there's a lot of salmon moving through the river Bears have more choice and where they can go to fish so on days like today where there aren't really that many salmon jumping Bears kind of have to congregate along these few precious spots but when there's more fish available they tend to spread out yeah it can be quite counterintuitive when Salmon densities are extremely high at Brooks Falls then you're not going to see as many bears fishing here because the Bears can get their fill their stomachs easy and then they go you know rest in the forest but when you have days like today when there are just enough salmon to keep Bears interested then you're gonna have more bears gathering at Brooks Falls and uh up on the far side of 151 Walker had been tolerating 717 that that smaller female there for a long time but then uh their bear came down I'm not sure from this perspective if that happens to be number 807 it could be he's a young adult male 151 Walker larger and more dominant but um evidently that other bear was not intimidated by uh by walkers efforts to maybe tell them to back off yeah now the females seems like she wants no part in that she's leaving Bears tend to have I think higher tolerance for one another when they are well fed so there are days especially a series of days where they haven't been catching a lot of salmon you maybe will see more of those aggressive encounters with uh with one another but you can see that Walker also doesn't consider and again he's the bearer number 151 he's the bear uh Downstream of the boulders immediately Downstream of the boulders and the bear Downstream of him towards that Far Side uh is still standing in close proximity uh but 151 he is exposing his hindquarters to that other bear and that in a way can be a sign of of dominance in in brown bears because that's a that's a place that gets attacked a lot uh if you happen to be like a subordinate bear and you turn your back on an undominant bear that that dominant bear is likely to attack your hindquarters so if you are willing to turn your back on a bear that tends to be a sign of dominance because you just say hey you know what I'm I really don't consider you a threat yeah and I mean you'll typically when you when you walk away is the winner um they're not going to walk away and show that that side of them if they aren't you know sure they're gonna be fine real quick we're going to jump away from Brooks Falls because we do have a mother and a yearling Cub walking Downstream towards the camera this is uh number 402 she's one of the older bears that we have at Brooks River she's in her she's approaching her late 20s now and she has a single yearling cub this year so I think we're just going to catch a glimpse of them because I was a little late to notice that they were walking through but that was a yearling Cubs so a little larger a little lighter in brown than some of our first year Cubs that we have running around the river hopefully we'll get a chance to see some of the other bear families coming up later in the broadcast okay yeah she's had what eight litters and it's like amazing fecundity in that bear right yeah yeah so this is her eighth litter um and she could have more partly she's had so many litters because when she was younger she would um you know she would come back to Brooks River and then the cup would die and then she would return to um her extra cycle would return and she would mate and then she would give birth the following year uh so that sort of like sped things up is she um was unlucky in the past raising her Cubs but she's had much more success in in recent years and she looks really good um I was noticing her at the Falls last night your lane looked really good really good Cubs um on the river right now yeah she does um The Yearling is small and actually I think that's a viewer question let me see if I can find that um that came up so let's pull that up real quick we're looking at um not 402 right now we're looking at number eight two one on the lip of the falls we're going to talk about him in an interaction that he had with the cub in a little bit but somebody was wondering 402's yearling looks really small compared to a similarly aged 910 Junior and 719 so those are also yearling Cubs in their second year this person was wondering is he or she just a late bloomer uh what do you think Felicia um I mean definitely they can um you know they change with genetics you might just have a bear that has bigger Cubs than others um but also 910 junior is just huge um that's a big yearling um so any yearling is gonna look small compared to her yeah so that's definitely part of it um I also think and wonder if some bears just don't grow as fast as others like in some people I I remember I was like in ninth grade or something and I was maybe I was one of the shortest kids in high school and it wasn't very comfortable for me and I'm not I'm not a tall person now but yeah sometimes that just happens with with people they just don't tend to you know to grow really quickly into their adolescent years or their um or their uh and The Yearling is not in its adolescent years but I think that happens with with bears too some of them just don't grow as fast as another I don't think there's anything wrong with it or reason to be concerned about its Health uh so yeah if you're wondering about that it is smaller than some of the other yearlings that you'll see but um it appears to be healthy at least from what we can see on the webcams still a compliment of adult males fishing at the waterfall number 821 at the top of the falls sitting down in that eor-like pose another bear that will do that is number nine zero three um 903 though has um blunder for overall and then blonder years and then I think Felicia and correct me if I'm wrong if you know differently uh I think that might be 907 in the jacuzzi that's at Big plunge pool um beneath the falls I think so um looking down it's they're a lot of bears with nice blonde ear tips like that but yeah and I don't have a picture from this year of 907 and I didn't queue any up for the broadcast today from past years but that bear and I don't know if I should even say this because it'll fuel the speculation among the Bear Camp fans but that bear is a spitting image of 856. like if you look at the facial profile in the ears the dark eye Rings maybe I'm seeing a little bit too much into this but really does look like 856 is one of our more dominant pairs um at Brooks River 151 Walker backing off the bear on the far side just a little bit uh I I think if Felicia I think if we knew who the father of these bears are and we don't because fathers don't father Bears don't play any role in raising their offspring I think we would definitely see physical characteristics in their offspring like we can with mother bears um like eight to one his facial profile to me looks a lot like his mother 504 but we don't know who his father is um if we knew that I think we'd be able to tease out some of those physical characteristics that those traits that get passed on from generation to generation oh yeah if we had access or the knowledge to know you know what the paternity of certain bears are we'd be able to pull characteristics like that really well and it would just be really interesting to see um but yeah Bears definitely inherit characteristics from their fathers as much as they do from their mothers um we just don't know the fathers to you know pinpoint and be exactly sure but there are some areas that are spitting images I know a lot of people point out like 89 looks a lot like 480 who you know they speculate um yeah so I guess I can fuel the rumor mill there with with what I said 907 but 856 being an extremely dominant affair on the river for so many years I'm sure he has sired many pumps and the 907 would be he's a young adult male so let's see uh forget exactly what year he he first seen at the river um but yeah he's you know he's I don't think he's even 10 years old but it would be like the right age for 856 to be you know cruising around the landscape siren um a lot of cubs that's a dominant adult male and he's still doing it today yeah I'm sure there are a bunch of you know considering he's been up there in that hierarchy for you know a decade um they're he's probably sired many Cubs along Brooks river right now good luck here uh to Bears or at the Bears in the in the far pool of Brooks falls again 151 Walker he is one of our larger and more dominant uh adult males uh he's older than all of the other bears that we're seeing at the waterfall right now so he's in his mid teens he's probably kind of like at the peak of his um skeletal size his skeleton you know length and height that's not going to really grow um anymore maybe just a little bit but he's kind of like really at his 99th percentile in in size but he can still put on a lot of body mass as he uh you know progresses from early summer to late summer of course in preparation for hibernation and also um his skull can continue to grow that's uh that typically happens in adult males as they can as they age their skull tends to get a bit wider that's super interesting I had not I didn't know that um really cool that their schools get to continue to grow yeah I think that's one reason why you'll see some of the really big adult males like 747 for instance do I have a picture of him I can bring up real quick uh or even eight zero one I think it was at the Falls earlier right before broadcast so I'll bring up a picture of eight zero one because you might see him um at the waterfall this is him a couple of years ago so not from this summer but he his ears are really wide set on the side of his head and that's a bit of a product of I think just the skulls continuing to get wider as as the bear matures in ages same thing with 747 this is him a couple of years ago his ears are in a kind of worse shape I think due to some fights since that time 856 though we talked about him he tends to he he has more perky ears than um than some of the other Bears the some of those other you know uh mature adult males and I wonder if it's just because he's like a really good fighter and and no one wants to tangle with him so he's just kind of kept his uh ears in good shape yeah that's also something that I've noticed about 856 um compared to the other males they have so many scars the shedding they a lot but he has a really nice even coat his ears are still really good looking um I don't know if that's a testament to his fighting skills to his dominance to both but he's not as beat up as the other Bears um around Brooks River let's head back to live footage now uh going to our Falls low cam here so one bear sitting on the bank considering its options whether to go into the river how hungry is it where it can where it can fish uh what competition it faces as well because when Salmon are not abundant at Brooks Falls the the productive fishing spots are few and bears compete somewhat fiercely over them so like the plunge pool below the falls the one we call the jacuzzi that's a really preferred fishing spot especially by big adult males a lip is a preferred fishing spot um and then also the the far pool as well in the lip of the falls we are Felicia we often see Bears kind of cueing up there awaiting their turn or sometimes shoving Bears off of the waterfall uh to get access to that limited space where salmon jumped yeah I've seen I've seen the lip of the um and then usually sometimes they'll catch a fish and then the bear will take it off camera into the woods to eat and then the next bear will move into that spot waiting to catch another one and that does sometimes uh create uh tricky situations especially for Cubs and you know right now we have on top of the waterfall number eight two one and I think this might be perhaps a good opportunity to talk about something that happened a few days ago now but a bear by the uh by the number 806 she's a mother bear with a single a cub this year she was fishing on top of the falls her cub was near there and let's um pull up the clip here because it'll help us to go go through things uh and the feed is a little bit choppy for some reason at this moment in time when we were recording this it wasn't as smooth as what we normally experience so we do have a mother bear sitting below the Falls um contemplating her options but you have 806's cup on top of the waterfall Mom's up there um she's on the far side of 821 so 821 is the bear on top of the falls as well but he's the one sitting down just like we saw on the live footage 806 is on the other side and eventually um she will catch a fish and fall off of the waterfall and then all of a sudden that sends off basically kind of like a Cascade of events though the cub in the situation probably is feeling a little uneasy there's a raven that landed on on the on the wall on the on the left side and that seemed to even kind of weird out the Cub but the Cub has a hard time you know standing in the water with the current and things like that so it's not quite sure if how close it can get the mom with that other bear nearby and I think that exposes it um to uh to some to some greater risk foreign yeah that's a sticky situation oh There She Goes yes her feet again a little bit choppy just from the internet that was um how that was working at the time so 806 falls off of the waterfall all of a sudden the Cub is up there mom's not nearby a lot of people want that fish from eight zero six um but then uh 821 turns and sees the Cub a vulnerable Cub there and attacks it now mother sees that she comes rushing over she gets right in a21's face the Cub falls off of the waterfall runs away everybody is scrambling looking around eight to one's looking around thinking maybe there's a fish there 806 is looking to see where she dropped her fish and she does walk away following her cub with that fish in her mouth so all through all of that she didn't forget that she had a fish team which was kind of amazing um you can see her up at the up at the top there with her fish her cub is is nearby we've seen them together since that time the Cub appears to be um okay um but maybe we can back this up uh and talk about again what happened once 806 falls off of the waterfall here um so that yeah I think this is this is the moment because Felicia a lot of people were wondering about the motivations of a21 why would it go after uh the cub in in this circumstance um I really think it's just straight and fantaside happens um and spring comes right at their most vulnerable at this time of year but I mean there's a little cup right there in this male space um probably wants to be out of the way it's right there mom's away There's an opportunity and then he uh gets beat up by Mom yeah you know I wonder if this and to me this really looks um incidental like um like mother fell fell off in the Falls eight two one he sort of looked to his his right and all of a sudden he was like oh my there's a cub there what is this thing doing so close to me I'm gonna go teach in a lesson so it may not have uh you know again I'm speculating we'd have to ask 821 himself it he may not have you know initially intended to like I see a cub and I want to attack it and I'm going to kill it which does sometimes happen um I I wonder uh if you know he saw uh vulnerability he tried he saw a chance to um to Showcase his dominance and the Cub was just in the wrong place at the wrong time what was also interesting and I'll back this up to uh just a few seconds um so we'll go back to this to the this moment I'll pause it right here because the Cub at this point has already fallen off the waterfall 806 is defending her Cubs so she's you know up there on the lip uh fighting off eight two one and now the bear that's closest to the camera right now standing on the ground that's number 83 he's a mature adult male he's a big guy he could have come in and attacked the cub but he doesn't I think he's kind of looking around like I think there's a fish down there uh what should I do that sort of thing you know so with adult males I I think a lot of times um you know if if they are motivated to attack a cub it's it's really like they see vulnerability in the Cub itself it's hard to ascribe motivations uh to a bear um you know a lot of times people will say there's uh you know the theory of selectually sexually selected infanticide like a male bear will kill a mother's Cub she'll go back into estrus and then he'll have the opportunity to meet but in this situation I don't think that could have been a likely explanation um just because 821 didn't Target the Cub until he sort of like turned his head and saw that hey there's this lone bear and so I think maybe it was a dominance thing I I don't really know for sure but I know a lot of people were wondering why a21 would have um would have done that yeah it doesn't look like like a sexually selective thing it just happened in that moment a little too close to that mail so um I don't think those motivations were there one other thing I think that has surprised some of the um bear cam viewers who have been watching a21 for a number of years is how he was aggressive in that situation because as a younger Bearer you sort of like happy-go-lucky and we see that a lot with um with sub-adult males and sometimes very young adult males that they're kind of very tolerant of one another they play with each other frequently and um they don't tend to show those those aggressive tendencies um but as they age and mature it does seem like as we go back to live footage here of of Brooks Falls it does seem like to me Felicia as they age and mature that their motivations change their priorities change and we see their behaviors their personalities change as a result 151 Walker here he's another great example he was a bear that played a lot with other Bears when he was younger and that's not a a characteristic that I would assign to him right now I would not call 151 a playful bear and I mean that playfulness serves to their advantage too because you know with their when they play a lot when they're young they're also practicing those fighting skills um and I mean he's not going to play very much now as an adult male but I mean it certainly sets up those valuable lessons for him to learn later in adulthood absolutely the Bears are individualistic they're adaptable they're smart they learn by watching one another they have you know these powerful motivations um to reproduce and to fill their stomachs so in a lot of ways um you know they're they're a lot like people so when you're watching the cams I do encourage everybody to get to know the Bears on the individual level great look here at 821 who were just talking about in that last clip filling his belly with the salmon that he caught um on the Lipa Brooks Falls but yeah when they when they're at the Falls there's risk involved there's competition involved and the Bears uh know that mother bears know that not all mother bears for that reason bring their cubs to the waterfall because of those risks Felicia it looks like H1 here is going to eat most all of that salmon indicating that he has not had a lot of fish today if he had been catching salmon frequently today then he probably would have um left more of that behind but and you know looking his paws leaving maybe just a little bit of entrails behind but I also looked like he ate the Gill plates and the mandibles as well which are it's a pretty tough bony pieces of of the salmon I can't imagine stomach stomaching that but the Bears do it yeah but those are valuable calories um if they have been catching more then they wouldn't be eating the whole thing they'd be hydrating we'd be seeing carcasses start to wash up a little bit um and then other Bears getting to grab the scraps um but there aren't really many fish jumping so they gotta eat all that they can get um right now and we're about halfway through our play-by-play today so if you're joining us a little bit late thanks for being here and if you join us from the beginning thanks for being here as well my name is Mike Fitz with explore.org talking brown bears and salmon at Brooks River and katmai National Park Alaska with katmai national park ranger Felicia Jimenez this is live footage of the waterfall right now we did break down a clip of a replay of a situation that happened with an adult male and a cub a few days ago and there's another situation that's similar Felicia that I think uh this would be a good opportunity to um to discuss since the Bears at The Falls seem to seem to be kind of settled in their respective positions because this one showcases um that not all adult males again just see a cub in a vulnerable position and decide this is a time to attack um so let's bring this um this clip up here so this is um from just a few days ago a bunch of bears on the lip of Brooks Falls um including a mother bear and her yearling so we saw that mother bear earlier number 402 oh on the live broadcast The Yearling fell off of the falls there so if you didn't see it let me back that up just a little bit whoops off the waterfall now that what that plunge pool I mean the currents in there are strong so that's probably why it got sucked under there for a little bit um this is a moment to pause it because the Cub is trying to swim away but there's a huge adult male in that plunge pool the jacuzzi below the waterfall and that is number 747 he sees that Cub there and they come almost nose to nose because the Cub is trying to swim out of the way look how close together they are I mean that's probably like less than maybe at most five feet I think the camera's perspective um makes it look a little bit closer than it is but they're almost nose to nose at this point 402 sees her cub is um at the base of the falls it's a little bit of a delayed reaction from her honestly but she comes over near the Cub gets in 747's face decides he says hey get away from my kid I didn't ask for your help or anything and then leave the river um safe and sound but yeah to me Felicia that's an indication of how um you know different Bears deal with these situations in different ways you know a lot of people have heard that adult male Bears will kill Cubs and that certainly has happened at Brooks River so in it so it does happen but looking at let me back this up just to this point where at maybe the closest point where 747 and that yearling are next to one another 747 could have easily overtaken that cub and attacked it but he decided not to I think he was maybe more curious about what that thing was doing than anything else yeah I mean they're they're so close they could touch noses right now if he really really wanted to do something he could just stick a paw out um and touch that Cub but it doesn't seem like there's any motivation from him to really go after the club and mom is like back off for real please um but if he really wanted to do something he would have and just go back yeah so I yeah I think that's just kind of like a great illustration of different behaviors among different Bears and the way that male bears react to Cubs um I have seen bears kill Cubs and when they and when it when it's happened um it seems like the mail is really targeting the family or it's like a um a situation where let's go back to live footage from The Falls here it's a situation where um you know the Cub is just so vulnerable and and the bear is like you know interacting with another bear or something like that and it just kind of takes advantage of the situation uh sometimes I think food is a reason why male Bears might attack Cubs maybe they see something small and furry and bears I think are conditioned to eat small and furry things so that could be a motivation but there's probably not not one reason why a male bear will choose or not choose um to to attack a cub but 747 in that situation to me showed a great deal of restraint yeah I mean this like Cub basically fell into his left this is a little bit more like a curiosity like what is this thing um why are you here then more of anything like wanting to attack the Cub um I was looking as we look at the live footage here at the waterfall looking at our other cameras uh pretty quiet on the lower River so we haven't gone down there yet and in the riffles right now a little bit quiet um 151 Walker's still on the far side had just finished a salmon that looks like 907 in the jacuzzi below the waterfall closest to the cam 821 is still on the top fishing and then um a younger bear I should I know this one's number and it escapes me at the top um off the top of my head this is a fairly young bear has pretty big poofy ears trying to find its place um on on the edge of the falls near these other adult males and when these younger Bears Felicia these sub adults get separated from their mothers then you know it they they are faced with new challenges um because they know how no longer have Mother's protection they have to learn how to fish for themselves they start to do that when they're with their mothers but you know seeing bears and seeing their mothers catch fish is one thing doing it on their own is is another and it can be kind of a steep learning curve for a lot of these Bears who are young and independent and on their own for the first time I can imagine the challenge I mean especially if you're you know grew up and your mom was fishing the lip um walking out there with all of these large you know big other Bears around I mean it's just you without Mom that's going to be really challenging to have to find your place so you know you'll see them try out different spots to make their way and see if they can carve out a spot for themselves but yeah they're really they're really interesting to watch but I mean I feel like for the most part when you see sub-adults they kind of tend to stay in the area where Mom would take them a lot um so yeah I mean if Mom is fishing on the lip that first time and you go out on your own it's got to be a pretty daunting task for them it's also fascinating to watch and see how the young bears learn by watching other Bears there's a certainly like a cultural transmission that happens between mother and Offspring so mother would be like hey salmon are here at this time of the year um and that's where we're going to go to fish and you're going to remember it so they learned that they learn you know where other food is available on the landscape they may learn you know good Denning habitat from their mothers but when we see them at Brooks Falls we also see them learning from other other Bears too because like 151 for example over on the far side you know Downstream of the boulders I don't think his mother ever took him to fish in the far pool at Brooks Falls he's kind of figured it out on his own by watching other bears and and just experimenting so again bears are Innovative it's one of the other characteristics I think that we can certainly assign to them with confidence that they're able to innovate and Learn by watching watching others so it's just one of the things that makes it so fascinating to see how these young bears figure out how to make a living and I know um we often get the questions like do bears really go to other streams or do they venture out to other places outside of Brooks River um and you know sometimes we'll point out that bears will do walkabouts um you know at this young age when they're you know sub-adults or young adults trying to find that range so that's another point of innovation for them and maybe they did grow up around this area but they're going to walk around and find other foraging neighborhoods to go to um and they will seek out those other you know spots for food yeah certainly sub-adulthood is a time of exploration for young bears in our next live chat uh on on Wednesday will be about the Teenage life of brown bears so those are the sub adult Bears those bears that are independent usually between two and five years old we'll be talking about them next Wednesday more specifically so yeah they when they're venturing out they can discover new home ranges and new things sometimes they'll come back to Brooks River as adults sometimes they will they will not Felicia before I forget and we run out of time it's maybe a good opportunity to talk about an older bear that came back to Brooks River this year that a lot of people were very excited to see yesterday because this is a bear that has used the river every year since he has been identified in 2001 and that is um number 480 Otis so somebody was wondering has Otis and seen this year so as a younger bear Otis used Brooks River as an older sub-adult or a young adult and he showed up yesterday for the first time this year this is him standing right at the base of the waterfall and he was fishing successfully there uh yesterday Felicia although he looks very skinny um so whatever he was doing over the you know the past month or so he wasn't eating a lot of food mm-hmm yeah I mean he looks really skinny but he's the fact that he showed up immediately started catching fish is such a good sign um yeah he's showed up pretty late this year but he is he's catching fish I he showed up right before Naomi and I we're gonna do our live chat um and then I went out after that happened and he had moved on but um I did go out last night and I saw him he was in the back um you know in the back of the um you know pools and he was catching fish so it's a really really good sign you really skinny right now really old but he's catching fish and he's being successful at it so that's something good absolutely um you know Otis is is entering his late 20s right now and if this is your first year Watching The Bear cams you may be wondering what's the big deal about this this um this bear uh a lot of people connect with Otis because of his work ethic uh he he's very focused on his task his ability to adapt the changing circumstances he's no longer nearly as as large and as dominant as it used to be so he has to figure out a way to make a living around the other large adult males at Brooks Falls uh he's extremely patient he's extremely skilled uh so yeah he's he's a great bear to watch overall and he's still catching fish like like he always has uh but you know when we get a look at him you know in these views at the waterfall you can see that his hip bones are protruding you can even see some of the vertebra on his lower back sort of sticking out so yeah he is really thin uh several years ago I wrote a blog post called um the brown bear fatness index and I would I would put Otis on the emaciated end of that Index right now just because he is so thin because you can see protruding hip bones uh and I have a um I want to compare Otis with uh another very old bear that I saw during the first few years that I worked at at cap high as a ranger and that is um number um number 16 we we no longer see him the last year he was seen as 2010 but his nickname was cinnamon and cinnamon in 2010 was very skinny like Otis I think the difference here is that um Otis has started to shed a lot of his fur and in this picture cinnamon had not started to shed a lot of his fur uh but that's that's maybe one thing that maybe makes cinnamon look a little bit um fluffier in in this Photograph behaviorally though that was that's the real difference that I'm seeing between Otis now and cinnamon in 2010. cinnamon was near 30 years old at this time so he was he was a pretty old bear but he was not fishing for himself he was really just Scavenging leftovers so this is him on the right um and he's standing next to a much younger seven four seven so if you're familiar with 747 this year as the giant that he is that's a young 747 um young adult male 747 right there cinnamon would stand next to him because 747 was a great angler back then and he would just kind of pick up and scavenge scraps we also saw at that time that Cinnamon's claws were really long this is his claws he had distinctive white claws uh but he it they were so long it didn't really look like it he had been doing a lot with them so I think he was you know just feeling the rigors of age and he was not moving around a lot his claws were continuing to grow um but they weren't getting worn down over time like it normally happens with brown bears where they're digging and and running across and walking across the landscape a lot um so cinnamon at that time he he didn't look well because he was Scavenging a lot um he was was begging from a lot of other bears and Otis on the other hand bring him back you know he's not doing those things he's not um Scavenging he's not begging he's in the waterfall he's catching fish for himself and he's quite mobile too so even though he's really thin fully shot I mean like you were talking about before um you know he seems to be doing uh quite well for himself despite you know maybe whatever ailments um in signs of old age he is he's experience if I wasn't seeing Otis catching fish or primarily begging um and I mean last night you know he was catching fish he did get a fish stolen that I saw from him but he put up a fight in trying to defend that fish um which you know if you're if he wasn't able to do that you know he would just let the bear take it from him but he's still mobile he's still moving and he's definitely actively fishing so these are all good signs this bear surprises me all the time um so yeah just seeing him out here and moving around as much is a really good sign absolutely uh Otis he's always had to be an old bear vibe to him I remember even saying on the webcam in 2013 like Otis so yeah he's this old guy and he wasn't really even that old back then in 2013. but he sort of had this old bear Vibe um and now I mean yeah you can definitely say Otis is an old bear but he's still getting the job done one way or the other so yeah um great to see him back I know a lot of people are looking forward to watching Otis uh throughout the rest of the summer and put on that um those body fat reserves that he needs to survive um winter hibernation so good luck to you Otis we'll go back to live footage here of Brooks Falls and now Downstream on the riffles camera single bears standing in the river looking upstream and Felicia the the ripples is a often a fun spot to watch because you'll sometimes see mothers and their cubs in this area sometimes you'll see more active fishing techniques like Bears running through the water trying to catch uh salmon and then also coming up in August this is one of the most beautiful scenes um along the river because the water is just filled with spawning red salmon I love the riffles platform a lot um and especially if you're someone who loves to watch moms in Cubs which who doesn't um you know we were talking about earlier how dangerous The Falls can be for you know females in their cubs but the riffles is a safer area for them um they still get fish and they'll get advantages because the carcasses will wash up Downstream and they can snatch those up but they can also actively fish in an area where the you know other bigger bears are not as closely packed together so it's a lot less risky of an area for moms and cubs to fish and mother bears they're always weighing risk versus reward um that's a theme that comes back again and again and again when we're talking about brown bears and there's a mother bear with some Cubs on the Lipa Brooks Falls right now so as we were talking about Otis talking about an older bear you know in his late 20s we're looking at some very young Bears here first year of life um so these were Cubs that were born last winter these are first year Cubs sometimes they're called um uh Cubs of the year you may hear the the hear the acronym thrown around called koi c-o-y so that just stands for Cub of the Year often you know they're called Spring Cubs as well but small dark bears they look small Felicia just because they're small relative to um to the adults but um you know they could they could easily weigh you know 30 40 sometimes 50 pounds but some of the some of the big ones at this time of the year yeah um it's amazing even this amount of growth you know they they emerge you know they're born and they're about the size like now they're you know 20 30 pounds even 40 50 pounds with some of the really big ones um but they'll grow even larger tremendous amount of growth in that first year um and it's so so fun to see and I think this might be uh number 26 um who is uh a young adult female her first known litter as far as I know so she has two Cubs um this year A lot of times Felicia these these young female Bears they sort of fly under the radar because there's so many different Bears moving around on the river and a lot of times younger Bears aren't as like distinctive in their physical features um at least they don't stand out like a like a bear like Otis for example so it's kind of easy to overlook them and then all of a sudden they come back with Cubs and you're like oh who is this bear and what have you been doing all of these years um and it's it's with with mothers and cubs you know the new moms especially face um you know a lot of difficulties in raising their cubs because it's a learning experience for them they have some of the memories of being with their mother of course but I think it's this is really kind of like on the job training you can be told what it's like um to be a parent right like I grew up you know I had parents right um but I I can't imagine like what it really what it's like to raise a kid I don't have any children right now and I think you know you just kind of you just figure it out once you actually have that experience and I think it's the same um with with mother bears yeah I mean especially watching first year you know mothers first-time mothers seeing them working out um you know throughout the season is really interesting to see um I mean the fact that she's bringing her brand new spring Cubs here she's parking them on the fish ladder right there she's definitely working out her technique for how she's going to fish successfully um I've seen this bear you know every so often I saw her try out a technique you know like this in the Lower River mostly I haven't seen her that much at The Falls but it seems like she treated her Cubs um and then started fishing in the Lower River so I guess she's trying out a new spot right now but it's it's on the job training No One's Gonna tell you how to how to do it so if she's working that out it's interesting to see how some mother bears will take their cubs to the falls and others generally avoid the Falls especially with first year Cubs like this year I had said publicly hey we're not going to see divot at the waterfall because she doesn't bring her cups to the falls and then she did one day um but if it's a you know an older more experienced mother um so you know Bears will do you know they they change their behaviors um so we can't think of these animals as as unthinking creatures just acting basically um they are weighing their options they see what the competition is they feel the hunger and all of those factors together motivate them to make different decisions um like where you know there's food like there's food at the waterfall I haven't had many salmon but I'm not finding success at the Lower River maybe I'm going to take a risk upper Brooks Falls and then some other bears are like like four zero two she's like I don't care how old my cup is I'm going to be at Brooks Falls no matter what um so yeah watching the individual behavior of the mother bears is fascinating to see how they're making those determinations yeah I like seeing them work it out and seeing them change up their strategies um and yeah it's just it's so interesting to see because they definitely are actively weighing these choices weighing these risks and rewards and then when you know an incident does happen they learn from that and they change their behavior on that it's not purely Instinct for these bears a couple of salmon jumping the waterfalls right now keeping the Bears interested uh 907 in that plunge pool I don't think we've seen him with success so far during this broadcast but he's been in the waterfall the whole time trying his luck eight to one there great ground the look of the falls that's another thing that amazes me about prayers no no matter how often I see it happen Felicia the skill and the strength involves in catching a fish in your mouth like that I'm not as big as a brown bear of course um but still I mean it it takes practice to perfect that skill um 821 is getting really really good at it and those are big fish too they look so small um in you know the paws of these large bears but you know they give me six eight you know even like nine pound fish they're they're big fish they're heavy fish and you know that's essentially catching an eight pound fish with your with your mouth throw an eight pound sack of flour at your head and see if you catch it um that's what these bears are doing in 821 working through this fish quickly um not really savoring the moment so bears bears don't really live in the slow food movement typically um they gotta they gotta pack on uh the weight before winter hibernation and salmon are a great food for them because not only are salmon high in protein but salmon especially early in the in the run when they're migrating are high in fat as well so the eggs just nothing but fish oil so those are extremely high in calories the skin really high in fat as well so it's a really great food um for for brown bears nope he's gonna eat the whole thing too um he's had some success though this is what number three two or three that we've seen him at least two that we've seen him catch right now on this you know broadcast yeah I think this is I think this is his third during the broadcast so at least three through keeping score at home um for that the most salmon I've ever seen a bear eat in a single sitting has or was Otis I saw him catch and eat 37 salmon in about five hours and then the webcam audience after I had to leave the Brooks Falls platform saw him catching another seven salmon so I think it was like 42 salmon in about a five hour period for Otis I don't know if any bear will ever equal that quite incredible that they they can fit that much food into their stomachs hundreds of thousands of calories on a good day and I mean when they're catching fish at that rate too you see the difference in you know their size and they fill out like um another successful bear that I've been seeing has been 128 and just the difference in her size she walked by the beach um you know in Camp the other day and she has like a nice round tummy and was just pointing out to Naomi how different and how much better this bear looks in one week yeah they can gain something like two pounds of body mass a day when they have enough food available to them and Brooks River gives them uh that opportunity so if you're looking at Bears right now that seem really skinny you're wondering hey are they gonna get enough food they can they can make up for lost time like a bear like Otis he can make up for lost time quite quickly uh by catching you know just a few fish per day so they're really good at metabolizing protein really good metabolism fat some bears will go off into the forest and eat berries once those um those fruits become available to them a little bit later in the summer the combination of like salmon and berries especially is like the ultimate bear diet high sugar high fat high protein it gives them everything that they need so yeah the Bears have plenty of time before winter hibernation to make make up for um any lost meals that they didn't get um in June or earlier in July yeah I know that's a worry with a bunch of people um because of you know the possibility of the salmon run being laid but they're gonna get there they're gonna get it we have maybe just about a minute left in our broadcast Felicia uh we have you know again the very young bear uh on the other side of 821 the adult male sitting in the foreground closest to our camera um right now as you've been watching bears at the river over the last you know week or so has there been anything that has you know really stood out to you or maybe you know stood out front to you from the last hour or so of our broadcast there are a bunch of bears fishing now um and they seem like they're they're catching fish um and they're being successful maybe it's not completely captured on the cams all the time but there are so many bears around and there are a lot of salmon in that River absolutely the uh the the salmon run you know the migration period for sockeye salmon usually ends around this time of the year but we've been seeing a trend over the last several years of salmon continuing to move into Brooks River and jumping Brooks Falls throughout August so I'm curious to see if that's going to be the case um this year so the river is definitely a place of change the behaviors of the Bears change on a daily basis no one bear acts the same we saw many different examples I think during the play-by-play today including our clips of of bears you know behaving in different ways depending on the different circumstances that they are experiencing in in that in that moment and Felicia I'd like to thank you for joining me today and taking the time out of your work schedule to to talk about brown bears and salmon at Brooks River it's been fun yeah thank you for having me and thanks to our volunteer camera operators and moderators and I know we had a very hard working camera operator looking for Bears on the lower River camera we didn't get a chance to go down there today maybe because I talk too much but we'll try to do that again at a later point my name is Mike Fitz with explore.org thanks for joining me today thanks to Ranger for Alicia from katmai National Park and until we talk to you again enjoy the brown bears [Music] thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: Explore Bears & Bison

Views: 15,768

Keywords: explore.org, explore, live nature cam, animal cam, katmai bears, bear cam, alaska bear cam, live cam highlights, brooks river, brooks falls, live chat, brooks live chat, brooks mobile, bear cam alaska live, mike fitz, bears of brooks falls, bears, brown bears, live bears, bear educatin, national park service, katmai national park, katmai bear cam, play by play, 480, otis, 747, 32, chunk, 128, grazer, 909, 910, 856, 435, holly

Id: KOC-Fn04ynQ

Length: 62min 32sec (3752 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023