Tuesday kicks off Fat Bear Week, a tradition started in 2014 by the Katmai National Park and Preserve that celebrates the biggest bears in the national park in a March Madness-style contest.
The once-small tournament has grown into a nationwide celebration, Forbes reported. Last year the contest brought in over 600,000 votes.
Fans will be able to vote on numerous bears, as the park has a large population of chubby beasts. Whether fans are behind Chunk, Popeye or Otis, all the bear contestants are fun to cheer for. and fans can fill out their own brackets.
Katmai National Park and Preserve was established in 1918 to protect the volcanically devastated region surrounding Mount Novarupta and the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The park is also home to thousands of brown bears that thrive thanks to the planet's largest runs of sockeye salmon.
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Park rangers did share that the fatter the bear is, the healthier they are, and for the past few months, the Kamai's brown bears have been feasting on salmon, but only one fat bear can be the champion.
"All bears are winners, but only one true champion will emerge," according to the National Park Service.
People interested in playing can vote online to determine which bear will advance in each round. They can also download a bracket to fill it out.
This year's Fat Bear Week starts on Sept. 29 and will finish on Fat Bear Tuesday, Oct. 5. Voting for the matchups will be done between 12 p.m. and 9 p.m. EST.
Bear 747, named after the airplane, will look to repeat this year; the animal weighs in at 1,400 pounds.
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