A 34-year-old Kailua-Kona woman’s surfing companion fought off a shark late Friday morning that attacked her in the murky waters of Hawaii island’s North Kohala Coast.

Brian Wargo, 45, said he and Mckenzie Clark, an experienced surfer, were surfing outside the reef about 150 yards out at Halaula Lighthouse near Hawi when he heard her screaming.

"I saw her on her board and lifted completely out of the water with a 3-foot dorsal right next to her board and a giant tail kicking and splashing all over the place," said Wargo, owner of Bite Me Fishing Charters and Bite Me Fish Market Bar and Grill.

The attack occurred at 11:12 a.m., Hawaii County police said. Clark was treated for injuries to two fingers at North Hawaii Community Hospital and released before 3 p.m.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources closed the beach and posted shark warning signs.

Wargo said he paddled as fast as he could to Clark, who was about 20 yards away, but after lifting her up, the 12- to 15-foot tiger shark had put her down in the water and was coming back at her.

He first saw the shark bite her board and left hand. "I watched her rip her hand out of the shark’s mouth," then fall off the board, he said.

The shark was dragging Clark by the ankle leash out to sea and away from him, Wargo said.

He was 3 to 4 feet away when the shark started coming back at her, he said. "I reached out with both hands, grabbed the dorsal fin, and the shark turns me sideways on my board," he said.

The 245-pound surfer remained on his board with his weight on top of the shark, continually kicking it as hard as he could until it paused "trying to figure out what was going on," he said.

The professional fisherman then pounded the shark as hard as he could five times between the gills and pectoral fin. "He felt it and headed out to sea," Wargo said.

Wargo called out to Clark to ask how she was. She responded saying, "‘He bit my f—g fingers off.’ She showed them to me. Her middle finger had a big flap of skin off, and her ring finger was bloody."

"I said, ‘Can you paddle?’ She said, ‘Yes, I can paddle,’" he said.

Two other surfers came up from behind and watched their backs as they paddled in, cutting through 10-foot-face waves.

When they got to shore, Clark took off her wet suit, and they wrapped it around her hand. They had to scale a big cliff to get back to their cars. Wargo called 911 as he drove her to the hospital.

Clark told him that when the shark lifted her up, she thought she was "dry-docked on a rock."

Clark’s ring finger was dislocated, the shark having "ripped into the bones. All the tendons were ripped off, and the middle finger got 20 stitches," Wargo said.

The shark left a bite mark 15 inches across and 9 inches deep on her surfboard.

A waitress at a restaurant at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai, Clark won’t be able to work for quite a while since she will have to undergo surgeries, he said. He worries she doesn’t have insurance since she works part time, he said.

"It was pretty intense," he said. "It felt like slow motion."

"The shark’s intent was to eat her," Wargo said, adding that it kept trying to go after her while she was in the water without her board for protection.

"I didn’t think I was going to be fighting a shark," but the result was, "I got into a fistfight with a shark," he said.