Surfers

Four of five La Jolla men initially charged with murder in the beating death of a professional surfer pleaded guilty to lesser charges Friday. The fifth defendant, accused of delivering the fatal blow, rejected a plea bargain and still faces murder charges. What began that night in May 2007 as a barroom argument ended in a fatal confrontation -- with Emery Kauanui, 24, bleeding from his head outside his mother's La Jolla home.

After hundreds of Internet threats and the mobilization of sheriff's deputies by air, land and sea, Saturday's much-anticipated revival of the paparazzi-surfer war in Malibu came down to this: One woman with a handwritten sign and an unflinching desire to make a point.

Nailing down the facts in two June brawls between paparazzi and Malibu locals would seem to be as easy as a mouse click. Video and still cameras captured the beach fracases from multiple angles, and the footage was posted online for all to see. But a month later, much remains unclear. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has not charged anyone in the incidents, and one surfer says a knife wielded by a paparazzo was edited out of the video sold to Internet gossip sites.

Kelly Slater has authored a soon-to-be-released book, in which he describes himself as "about the luckiest guy you'd ever meet." That's putting it humbly. Remarkable talent and execution are what have enabled the pro surfer to flourish under the sun and set him apart from all other surfers. Slater, 36, who won his first ASP World Tour championship in 1992, when he was 20 and not long before he began to lose his hair, on Friday clinched a ninth championship.

Eight-time world champion Kelly Slater is the greatest competitive surfer of all time. What many don't know is that he's also a pro-level golfer, a musician and the voice of a surfing penguin in the animated film "Surf's Up" (opens June 8). Born in Florida, Slater, 35, has spent most of his life chasing waves around the world, which has led him to the sport's mecca: Hawaii. Here are secrets he's gleaned in more than two decades of calling the islands almost home.

TIRED of fluffy television shows set on the beach, some Southern California surfers are looking forward to "John From Cincinnati." "If anybody could grab surfing in its teeth and shake something real from it, it would be David Milch and Kem Nunn," said Scott Hulet, editor of "The Surfer's Journal." But Dibi Fletcher, who along with her husband, Herb, had pitched HBO an idea for a series set in Hawaii's surfing underworld, said they shouldn't hold their collective breath.

Though the electronic monitoring device was firmly wrapped around the right ankle of Sunny Garcia, he was feeling considerably lighter in the shoulders Tuesday when he arrived at the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach. Garcia, a 37-year-old former world champion from Hawaii, is under house arrest in Newport Beach this summer. He pleaded guilty last October to tax evasion charges and spent three months in federal prison before his release in April.

The name resonates through the Hawaiian Islands like the vibration from a volcanic blast. It awakens memories of brothers Michael and Derek Ho, who set the bar on the famed North Shore and left the rest of the surfing world playing limbo. Mason Ho was born into that Hawaiian royalty nearly 19 years ago. And this week at the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, he hopes to add to the family legacy.

Tattooed in large black letters across Sunny Garcia's chest is the phrase: "DEATH AND TAXES." Those are the only sure things in life and Garcia, a former world surfing champion, is living proof that if you get caught evading taxes, you go to prison. Garcia, 37, who remains under house arrest after three months behind bars, was granted permission to compete this week in the Boost Mobile Pro at Lower Trestles near San Clemente.

Pro surfers visit far-flung exotic locales and ride some incredible waves. But not many have been to La Paz and sliced across the wake of an enormous whale shark. Holly Beck and two Body Glove teammates recently traveled to the southern Baja California port and spent hours diving with one of the ocean's most mysterious and bizarre denizens. It was small by whale shark standards, measuring only 20 feet -- they can be twice that size -- but to Beck and her teammates, it was enormous.