Grizzly Bears Fishing for Salmon in Alaska

Join wildlife photographer Max Goldberg watching grizzly bears fishing for salmon in Alaska. Enjoy more of his photos of wild grizzly bears here.

By Max Goldberg

Watching the grizzly bears fishing for salmon in Alaska was quite an entertaining experience for me, as I had never seen anything like this in my life. I got to see the whole process: catching the salmon, skinning the fish and eating the brains (those are the fattiest parts), and getting back to the falls to do it again. I will admit that the sound the bears made when they were ripping the fish apart was slightly disgusting, but cool at the same time.

Usually, after a bear would catch a salmon, it would take its catch to calmer water or to the river bank. Sometimes, the bears would eat the salmon right where they caught them; after eating nothing but grass for the past few months, why wait a second longer to eat delicious salmon?

Watching bears catch salmon is definitely not for anyone with a weak stomach. Besides the gruesome sounds, there are bright red guts flying everywhere as the bears tear into the salmon. Good thing at this point I hadn’t eaten lunch!

My favorite part of photographing the bears catching salmon was laughing at the expression of the salmon right before or right after they got caught. They seemed to have a “What have I done?” face in every shot.

The grizzly bears seemed to be putting on a show for us! Every time they caught salmon, they turned toward the cameras as if to say, “Look what I caught!” Both the photographers and the bears were having fun. Only the salmon were not having fun.