 -- An American tourist in Australia recently captured heart-stopping video of a close encounter between a shark and a group of surfers at The Pass, a popular surf beach in New South Wales' Byron Bay.

Derik Broshar of Iowa said he was hanging out with friends at The Pass this past Tuesday, when he noticed a shark approaching surfers on the water, so Broshar started filming, local newspaper The Northern Star reported.

"We were looking down at all the surfers having a good time, and we saw this shark," Broshar told the paper. He added that in the video he recorded, the shark can be seen "slowly" moving "in towards the surfers and you can kind of hear some people in the background say, 'We should warn them.'"

A few people on shore tried "to whistle down the surfers," Broshar said, "but it was a little windy," so the surfers "couldn't really hear us from that far up."

At one point in the video Broshar recorded, one surfer appears to almost ride his board right into the shark -- but the surfer appears to narrowly miss the creature as he catches a wave right over it.

Broshar said that the shark eventually left "without incident," but added, "that was close."