Going back to July 2019 for this series of images and our trip to Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. The fishing was great – for the bears. 😉
The bears were very active, working hard to fatten up for the coming winter. We would stage ourselves with a school of salmon between us and the bears and more often than not, the bears would charge at the fish, coming right toward us.
It was absolutely thrilling to watch (and perhaps a bit unsettling too – haha). When one would catch a fish, any other bears nearby would take notice. In the last couple of frames, you can see a second bear behind the one that caught the fish. It soon chased the first bear, hoping to steal its catch. They ran by and disappeared in the brush so I don’t know if it was successful.
This is a series of 38 images shown in about 7 seconds, slower than what it happened in real time. In reality the whole sequence happened in about 4 seconds so that gives you a sense of how fast these massive creatures can move.