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Established in 2011, the Marshall Islands National Shark Sanctuary is one of the largest of its kind anywhere on the planet. But, as it turns out, bigger isn’t always better.

Marine conservationist Philippe Cousteau and his colleagues reported frequent illegal fishing of reef sharks from within the sanctuary during a recent visit to film the documentary “Nuclear Sharks.” The sanctuary is nearly 800,000 square miles, so the enforcement of the rules over the area’s entirety is proving to be an insurmountable task.

"The system is broken and illegal fisheries are laughing all the way to the bank," Patric Douglas, executive producer of "Nuclear Sharks,” told Discovery News.

The action to set aside such a massive area of the Pacific Ocean for shark conservation was lauded in 2011 by conservationists. Five years later, the reality is that the size and scope of the protected area makes enforcing the rules almost impossible. Philippe Cousteau and his wife Ashlan Gorse released a statement, which called the sanctuary “an extremely tough place to police, a fact that illegal fishermen know as well."

The team of filmmakers traveled to the Marshall Islands to document the sharks living in the waters where 67 nuclear tests took place more than a half-century ago. It will be featured during Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week.”