The portly naked man lambasted online for lying naked atop a dead shark may be a former NYPD cop, according to a report.

A former member of the Finest named James McSwigin was the whale who made an ass of himself on the poor fish, a sports anchor in Florida told an Orlando Sentinel reporter.

“This guy lives in upstate New York, that photo was taken two years ago off the shores of Long Island — not in Florida,” David Pingalore of WKMG-TV in Orlando told Mike Bianchi on Friday on Bianchi’s “Open Mike” radio show.

Pingalore said he learned the naked man’s identity after a pal of the ex-cop contacted him and sent him photos of the man in less revealing attire.

“I have the man that’s fully clothed that’s naked on the shark, on the boat. Yes, normal photographs,” Pingalore said.

Pingalore said he had brokered a meeting between the man and University of Florida Gators coach Jim McElwain, who Deadspin reported looked like the guy on the shark.

“I was on the phone with Steve McClain [Florida’s senior associate athletics director for football],” Pingalore said. “The naked man wanted to meet Coach McElwain, then all of a sudden — an hour later — he flipped and got scared” and the meeting was called off.

“The man that is naked on the shark is afraid for his life because he believes bounty hunters — I’m not making this up — and people with shark people, whatever those people would be called … he’s afraid because the New York Post put up an article about ‘who is this naked man’ on the naked shark,” he said.

Pingalore said the jaw-dropping picture has been on the internet for a couple of years.

“This woman from the United Kingdom had sent the tweet out, then Deadspin, what they did, was [ask] ‘Is this Jim McElwain or not?’ They didn’t say it was,” he said.

TV conservationist Anneka Svenska has urged her Twitter followers to find the man and ask him why he made an ass of himself on the fish.

“Where is the humor in humiliating slaughtered animals?” she wrote.

Pingalore said the butt-baring photo was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

“I guess in the UK there’s some websites that naked women get on sharks, so they were trying to mock what women were doing with sharks,” he said.