Big Island firefighter Chadwick Chun Fat was searching for a missing swimmer yesterday in a department helicopter when he spotted a great white shark about 1/8-mile from where the man disappeared off McKenzie State Park.

Chun Fat compared the shark to a 25-foot boat, with a blunt snout and large tail and pectoral and dorsal fins.

"We thought maybe it was a big tiger shark at first but then we flew at it with the sun at our back and said, 'That's no tiger shark,'" Chun Fat said. "It had no stripes, just dark gray. It looked like a big, stubby submarine. It was very big."

About an hour after the shark left the area, Chun Fat dived into the ocean and discovered pieces of tattered white board shorts and underwear belonging to the missing 27-year-old man.

The board shorts appeared to have teeth marks in them, said Battalion Chief Darren Rosario.

"The shorts were torn with strong evidence that a shark had hit it," Rosario said. "They had teeth patterns like a shark bite."

Fire officials later showed the tattered shorts to the man's family and the search for his body was suspended, Rosario said.

But it remains a mystery whether the bites were related to the swimmer's disappearance, Rosario said.

"Nobody will ever know that," said Chun Fat, a fire rescue specialist.

He saw the shark swimming parallel to McKenzie State Park, where the swimmer was swept away from the steep and rocky shoreline Saturday night during a night of drinking and partying.

Chun Fat is both a commercial fisherman and avid diver and said, "We see a lot of sharks out here — Galapagos, tigers — but that's the first time I've seen a great white in person."

The shark's dorsal fin stuck about a foot out of the ocean and its tail fin also broke the surface of the water until the helicopter flew close by.

Even then, the shark dipped just below the surface, Chun Fat said.

The missing man had been drinking at McKenzie State Park Saturday night when he jumped into the ocean just before dark and got into trouble.

Friends threw him makeshift flotation items and tried to string ropes together, but the line was not long enough to reach him, Chun Fat said.

The rocky shoreline features 30-foot cliffs and a strong ocean surge, Chun Fat said.