The bar that airs the dramatic, live fat bear cams
While the sleepy 1960s Western ballad "Sin City" wafted through Brooklyn's B61 Bar, a salmon squirmed beneath a bear's claws as the hungry omnivore chomped on the fish's fatty brains.
At B61 Bar, named for the city bus line that frequently travels back and forth past the brick tavern, this was a normal late afternoon in July.
Elijah Miller, B61's bartender on Wednesday and Thursday nights, has aired the live streamed explore.org bear cams for four years running. The webcams bring the unfettered wildness of Alaska's remote Katmai National Park -- which teems with brown bears and salmon -- to viewers across the globe. Miller, for his part, broadcasts the bear cams for, perhaps, the purest reason imaginable.
"It just makes me really happy," said Miller, as he plopped a foamy lager on the bar.
Observing the bears snatch fish from the river, fight, and mate, is a summer custom that Miller's midweek patrons have come to appreciate. Admittedly, it's a pleasing post-work activity. There's no incessant, streaming news ticker. No terrible environmental news. No appalling behavior from the powerful and politically connected. "We're just watching bears," said Miller.
"I can’t think of a better spot in the world to watch the bears than B61 -- the ultimate bear den," said Charlie Annenberg Weingarten, the founder of explore.org and director of the Annenberg Foundation, a philanthropy organization.
In mid-July, B61 visitors are in for a treat. It's the peak of the salmon run. Crowds of salmon leap from the river as they attempt to jump over a waterfall, on their dogged journey upriver. It's a feast for the bears, many of which are veteran, expert fishers.
"People watch it for hours," said Miller, a Brooklyn musician. "Even the confused people get drawn in," he adds, noting that most folks stepping into a bar expect to see sports on TV, not bears gorging on 4,500-calorie salmon.
"People watch it for hours."
Many B61 bear cam viewers are also, perhaps unwittingly, witnessing one of the greatest natural spectacles left on Earth. These webcams are located in the middle of Katmai National Park, which is itself a wild, protected land within the greater Bristol Bay area, a massive region in southeast Alaska and home to the richest run of sockeye salmon on the planet. Unlike watersheds in the Lower 48, Bristol Bay -- its rivers, headwaters, and forests -- are in relatively pristine condition. This is nature at its richest, unaffected by mining, agriculture, and industrial development. Bristol Bay is a world teeming with life and bounty, where salmon crowd the rivers, lynx dash through the woods, and bears grow profoundly plump on salmon.
"Its potential is fully realized," Mike Fitz, a former park ranger at Katmai National Park and currently a resident naturalist for explore.org, said in March.
The bear cams show us a wild, untrammeled world from a time past, a wilderness that's largely gone, or forgotten in the places most of us live. "What we consider normal today is a degraded environment," Fitz said. "We just accept it because that’s what we’ve grown up with."
That unparalleled wildness is all the more reason to protect the greater Bristol Bay area, argue ecologists, legal experts, and local residents. The Trump administration, however, has restarted plans to allow an unprecedented mine in Bristol Bay, a move that has baffled the environmentalists combating efforts to develop the land. "It is absolutely preposterous," noted Joel Reynolds in March, western director and senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "How does helping this underfunded Canadian company make America great again?" Reynolds wondered, referring to the Canadian mining company, Northern Dynasty, that wants to excavate gold and copper from the region.
Yet, thanks to farsighted conservation efforts and a state that keeps vigilant watch over the health and biology of Bristol Bay's salmon populations, the region's salmon numbers are vibrant today. And that means a sustained population of healthy, fat bears.
You can live stream the bears anywhere these days. But there are few folks out there as enthusiastic about the bears as Miller, down at B61 Bar. With bears chowing down on the big screen, it's a unique environment to rest your elbows and unload after a long day. "It's meditative and adventurous at the same time," said Miller.
The bears are live at B61 during Miller's shifts from 4 p.m. till 2 a.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, until it's time to close up shop and the last patrons quaff whatever's left in their glasses. Then, it's just Miller and some of the fattest bears on the planet, consuming copious amounts of salmon as they fatten up for winter's long, callous hibernation.
"At the end of the night, around four or five in the morning, it's just me and the bears," he said.
Topics Animals
Mark was the science editor at Mashable. After working as a ranger with the National Park Service, he started a reporting career after seeing the extraordinary value in educating people about the happenings on Earth, and beyond.
He's descended 2,500 feet into the ocean depths in search of the sixgill shark, ventured into the halls of top R&D laboratories, and interviewed some of the most fascinating scientists in the world.
