So what was the motive? A lucrative reality TV deal? Kobetich says he had no such mercenary goals in mind. "I'd hoped that people take it for the art of the photographs," he said in a telephone interview. "People think I did it for glory or financial gain, but that's definitely not the case. If I had wanted to make money, I'd have taken it to a big agency or something." Indeed, it's difficult not to believe the highly creative but somewhat eccentric Kobetich when he adds, "The whole thing just got out of proportion." Why he thought he'd get away with it when there were so many witnesses remains baffling.

The reality show of Dale's tale that turned into his nightmare (or comedy of errors) began one early morning in January when he went down to the Newport Pier to photograph, as he often does, the creatures that inhabit the underwater world between its pilings -- starfish, crabs, anemones and all the finny swimming things that call it home. "I'd been shooting a lot of things at odd hours," he says. "And when they were pulling in one of the dorys, there was this mako shark in it, so I bought it and took it out and shot those pictures." To get the shark into a suitably predatory pose he says he propped open its mouth with, of all mundane artistic tools, a number two lead pencil. "That one shot of the open mouth with the teeth, and the people looking down from the pier, that's a really neat shot. And, no, I didn't Photoshop it -- I don't even know how to use Photoshop."

Kobetich insists that art for its own sake was his sole reason for doing the shots, some of which he posted on Surfline in his Photo Gallery. From there, things took a complicated turn. Surfline decided to expand the images into a high-profile story and assigned a writer, Lori Denman, who interviewed Kobetich. "I opened my big mouth and kicked it over the edge," Kobetich says about the "embellishments" he fed the unwitting scribe. Meanwhile, as Denman wrote up the sensational copy, Kobetich's gallery photos were getting noticed. The Orange County Register called him looking for a story that, in his words, would have "blood and guts and drama." Kobetich declined, he says, because he was concerned that the mako might have been an illegal catch, and he didn't want the dorymen (or himself) in trouble. In fact those fears were unfounded -- such sharks are fair game to fishermen just as surfers are fair game to sharks.

The photographer admits that his ruse was taking on a dimension he had not anticipated. "I don't like killing things. Many times on my adventures under the pier I've saved baby seals caught up in tangles of old fishing line or cormorants that have been hooked. I've even bought crabs to shoot from the dory guys and then let them go." Later he adds that if he'd been out in the water and seen a live shark he would immediately have gone to inform the lifeguards so that an alert could be sounded. Even so, as days drifted by and the big story didn't appear on Surfline's website, Kobetich didn't do anything to stop it and even convinced himself that the piece had been cancelled. "I wish I'd called Surfline before things really snowballed," he says in retrospect.

If Kobetich would like to present himself as an innocent, interested only in the art of the image and raising consciousness about a usually unseen ecosystem, writer Lori Denman isn't buying it. She is embarrassed and upset: "I feel like I've been had," she said. "I'm angry." Denman, who describes herself as a conservation-oriented surfer, added, "I don't think we should be killing sharks any more. He used Surfline, he used me, and he used the shark. It's not cool." She also said, in defense of her writing, "I'm not a shark expert, I'm not a scientist, I'm a writer. It looked authentic to me."

So, could Surfline and Denman have done more to check the authenticity of the photos before posting the sensational story that was guaranteed to get so much attention?

Well, it's no easy task to spot the difference in a cleverly composed still photo of a shark that may be live, dead, or just resting. Two experts contacted belatedly (after the story had posted, but before Kobetich confessed) could only raise doubts, not a definitive answer. Shark researcher Ralph Collier, contacted by Surfline, had this to say: "It is difficult to determine whether the shark is dead or alive based on the photos. The mouth appears to be in the same open position in all of the pictures, but that could be a natural behavior."

Scott Anderson, an authority on great whites and surfers, reached at a location in the Farallon Islands so remote that it has only dial-up internet access, patiently downloaded the photos to comment: "Looks wrong. As for the shark, it has a stupid look on its face, not what I see in a live one, but I can't be sure. The pose is as if the shark is about to bite, but at what?"

Anderson's observations are astute. If the shark was about to attack Kobetich as he was bumping it away with his water housing, where was the telltale in-your-face photo?

Said Surfline's editorial chief Dave Gilovich: "I have been an editor for 33 years and I have never seen anything quite like this. It's not like Dale is an unknown quantity -- he's built water housings for and been good friends with many of the top surf photographers for decades. Perhaps it was our familiarity with Kobetich, or the colorful narrative he spun around the photos, but clearly this story never should have made it on the site as we presented it. I would love to say we carefully reviewed the pictures for authenticity prior to publishing, but, regrettably, we fell for this story hook, line and sinker. "

As a somewhat serious journalist in the weird and wacky world of surfology, this reporter had just one last question to ask the hapless photographer Dale Kobetich: At the end of the day, what happened to his prop, the shark?

"Oh," said Kobetich, with no sense of irony, "I ate it."