With their bright red scales and barbed mouths, sockeye salmon have always looked to me like an invasive species from some alien moon. That Alaskan brown bears love to eat the things by the hundreds only endears me to them further. Go bears. Get those fish heads.

Peter Ridgeway’s Katmai: The Bears of Brooks River puts these heroes front and center. Two sleuths of twelve bears have staked out a stretch of river and are determined to catch the most fish, jostling for position in the churning waters. Here’s the good part: I learned a little bit about brown bears. Here’s everything else: Katmai doesn’t stack up against its peers.

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