The stolen merchandise — live sharks — was recovered, still swimming, after a Marathon theft earlier this month.

A former employee of a Marathon fish-collecting and marine-life firm faces charges of stealing five Wobbegong sharks from the business and selling them to a pet store in Miami.

Wobbegongs, native to Australia and the South Pacific, can grow up to 10 feet in the wild. Wobbegong sharks are a relatively harmless bottom-dwelling shark, similar to locally common nurse sharks, but more colorful.

The Marathon fish collector alerted state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission enforcement officers on March 11 that he believed a Miami pet store was selling a couple of sharks, stolen several days previously.

Lt. Pat Reynolds found the sharks, labeled as “cat sharks,” selling for $140 in the shop.

The rightful owner said the imported and regulated sharks were worth $1,000 each.

The pet-store owner denied knowing the sharks were valuable imports, and said he bought them off a South Florida marine-life collector who claimed to have taken them locally. The merchant could produce no record of the purchase.

The sharks were recovered, and the store owner was cited for buying fish from an unlicensed person.

Names of the suspect and the business were not immediately available.