PINK SALMON: Take a good look at the two fish at the bottom of this photo. The salmon on the right is the female; the monstrous-looking creature in the foreground is the male. He doesn't always look so strange; in fact, for most of his life, this guy looks a lot like the opposite sex. During the breeding season, which lasts from June to September, the male pink salmon grows a mighty, laterally-flattened hump and an enlarged, hooked snout. The "mutant" males and their female counterparts follow chemical signals in the water, eventually ending up exactly where they were born. Migrating from open sea, this journey takes them 40 to 300 miles upstream, past waterfalls, shallow rapids and hungry bears. Spawning begins in mid-July and lasts to October. The female digs a nest, or redd, in the gravelly streambed with her tail and then fills it with reddish-orange eggs. Nearby males immediately fertilize the eggs, which are then covered with gravel by the female. A single female lays anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 eggs and guards them until she dies a few days later. By late October, all the spawning salmon are dead. The next generation hatches in the middle of winter, leaves its birthplace in late winter or early spring, spends the next two years at sea and finally returns as full-grown adults to repeat the cycle.