I get this repeatedly when starting a new game now.

The mod Fish and Wildlife caused a non-recoverable error.
Please report this error to the mod author.

Error while running event fws::on_tick (ID 0)
LuaSurface API call when LuaSurface was invalid.
stack traceback:
fws/control.lua:441: in function 'VisitChunk'
fws/control.lua:358: in function <fws/control.lua:347>
stack traceback:
[C]: in function 'index'
__fws/control.lua:441: in function 'VisitChunk'
fws/control.lua:358: in function <fws/control.lua:347>

May be related to AAI Industry:

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=48232&start=120#p427584

What other mods are you using?

It appears to be FWS is trying to 'check' on a map chunk on a surface that has been deleted.

Quite a few - let me do some debugging.

107.377 Checksum for core: 240630728
107.377 Checksum of base: 3852333060
107.377 Checksum of FARL: 2813802960
107.377 Checksum of MaintenanceMadness: 1693128514
107.377 Checksum of Soundpack-alerts-and-sirens: 1239884908
107.377 Checksum of what-is-it-really-used-for: 4022660739
107.377 Checksum of aai-industry: 3887443734
107.377 Checksum of aai-signals: 2261738169
107.377 Checksum of aai-vehicles-chaingunner: 1784905760
107.377 Checksum of aai-vehicles-hauler: 3776294681
107.377 Checksum of aai-vehicles-laser-tank: 2959302605
107.377 Checksum of aai-vehicles-miner: 2123171834
107.377 Checksum of aai-vehicles-warden: 3121478813
107.377 Checksum of aai-zones: 764660141
107.377 Checksum of AlertsList: 897902100
107.377 Checksum of alien-biomes-hr-terrain: 2010945986
107.377 Checksum of angelsaddons-cab: 1636910372
107.377 Checksum of angelsaddons-petrotrain: 324332802
107.377 Checksum of angelsaddons-smeltingtrain: 4149390473
107.377 Checksum of apm_lib: 2000556112
107.377 Checksum of apm_resource_pack: 1480106216
107.377 Checksum of Armored-train: 2721433040
107.377 Checksum of attach-notes: 2985641949
107.377 Checksum of AttilaSignalsMod: 4284520496
107.377 Checksum of AutoDeconstruct: 2582707891
107.377 Checksum of beautiful_bridge_railway: 1566978503
107.377 Checksum of BlueprintExtensions: 708079482
107.377 Checksum of bobenemies: 1060662388
107.377 Checksum of boblibrary: 2378563878
107.377 Checksum of Bottleneck: 3138809866
107.377 Checksum of bullet-trails: 3671570151
107.377 Checksum of creative-mod: 1892344902
107.377 Checksum of CredoTimeLapseModByMaessigcremig: 505154019
107.377 Checksum of deadlock-beltboxes-loaders: 3300889122
107.377 Checksum of DeadlockCrating: 2274829525
107.377 Checksum of DeadlockLargerLamp: 1635745026
107.377 Checksum of DiscoScience: 1074298861
107.377 Checksum of even-distribution: 531838026
107.377 Checksum of EvoGUI: 3279161307
107.377 Checksum of Fill4Me: 3404646308
107.377 Checksum of FNEI: 1332036379
107.377 Checksum of fws: 3528561151
107.377 Checksum of helmod: 2582671727
107.377 Checksum of Honk: 243896669
107.377 Checksum of Inventory Sensor: 3530739850
107.377 Checksum of Longer_Days_and_Nights: 2870610929
107.377 Checksum of MaxRateCalculator: 2542966774
107.377 Checksum of OpteraLib: 2463839464
107.377 Checksum of PlutoniumEnergy: 1551096255
107.377 Checksum of pollution-detector: 1641436466
107.377 Checksum of Portals: 1695962965
107.377 Checksum of power-grid-comb: 1829121871
107.377 Checksum of pushbutton: 2363802393
107.377 Checksum of qol_research: 3650033342
107.377 Checksum of radar-signals: 3104312551
107.377 Checksum of RealisticReactors: 3317421064
107.377 Checksum of robot_attrition: 4231589252
107.377 Checksum of speaker-signals: 3908214165
107.377 Checksum of stdlib: 68667574
107.377 Checksum of textplates: 2023599305
107.377 Checksum of Todo-List: 3182550957
107.377 Checksum of UnminableBots: 2573915646
107.377 Checksum of aai-programmable-structures: 4071669958
107.377 Checksum of alien-biomes: 1100617421
107.377 Checksum of apm_recycling: 231252484
107.377 Checksum of bobequipment: 1747497181
107.377 Checksum of bobores: 2217361090
107.377 Checksum of bobtech: 3556593645
107.377 Checksum of crafting_combinator: 3258078911
107.377 Checksum of Rampant: 165104443
107.377 Checksum of Realistic_Electric_Trains: 305886000
107.377 Checksum of speaker-signals-expansion: 3336616831
107.377 Checksum of aai-programmable-vehicles: 558201573
107.377 Checksum of apm_nuclear: 3364315726
107.377 Checksum of apm_power: 289839939
107.377 Checksum of bobplates: 2165067058
107.377 Checksum of Dectorio: 1942709027
107.377 Checksum of rso-mod: 1941456035
107.377 Checksum of AAI-CraftTab: 350959
107.377 Checksum of AsphaltRoads: 1758056996
107.377 Checksum of bobassembly: 1185353989
107.377 Checksum of bobelectronics: 4107517734
107.377 Checksum of boblogistics: 1288332458
107.377 Checksum of bobmining: 1899912674
107.377 Checksum of bobpower: 1727709700
107.378 Checksum of bobrevamp: 702745769
107.378 Checksum of bobwarfare: 716637925
107.378 Checksum of Deadlock-AAII-bridge: 1870793958
107.378 Checksum of dirtybarrels: 1979762416
107.378 Checksum of InlaidLampsExtended: 2749659067
107.378 Checksum of Actual_Craft_Time: 157537352
107.378 Checksum of air-filtering-patched: 2365594205
107.378 Checksum of angelsrefining: 1455265975
107.378 Checksum of beautiful_bridge_railway_bob_fix_updated: 669285556
107.378 Checksum of bob-basic-belt-reskin: 879441758
107.378 Checksum of bobmodules: 2483356921
107.378 Checksum of bobvehicleequipment: 3369944839
107.378 Checksum of deadlock-integrations: 3814085524
107.378 Checksum of early_construction: 216511321
107.378 Checksum of PavementDriveAssist: 521248945
107.378 Checksum of angelsaddons-oresilos: 1545536894
107.378 Checksum of angelsinfiniteores: 543246990
107.378 Checksum of angelspetrochem: 359394832
107.378 Checksum of grimerx-angels-tweaks: 1574296083
107.378 Checksum of omnilib: 146975626
107.378 Checksum of ShinyBobGFX: 2352605642
107.378 Checksum of SpaceMod: 1240619207
107.378 Checksum of YARM: 871297985
107.378 Checksum of angelssmelting: 609360190
107.378 Checksum of cargo-ships: 3519446209
107.378 Checksum of angelsbioprocessing: 3387071644
107.378 Checksum of deadlock-stacking-crating-bobs: 2656037687
107.378 Checksum of heavyfreight: 4014290721
107.378 Checksum of LogisticTrainNetwork: 2316787481
107.378 Checksum of MoreSciencePacks: 1593703183
107.378 Checksum of Rocket-Silo-Construction: 2175850666
107.378 Checksum of ShinyAngelGFX: 2616363950
107.378 Checksum of angelsindustries: 1523589521
107.378 Checksum of grimerx-angels-fuelstack-rebalance: 4063858943
107.378 Checksum of grimerx-make-outposts-great-again: 2163864623
107.378 Checksum of LTN_Tracker: 1369407423
107.378 Checksum of ScienceCostTweakerM: 813077870
107.378 Checksum of ShinyIcons: 1370494641
107.378 Checksum of grimerx-better-together: 1611221412
107.378 Checksum of LTN_Combinator: 892011993

I updated FWS to add a check and ignore invalid areas. It doesn't do any other cleanup (should be mostly negligible) yet but hopefully it will at least stop this crash (and if I had to guess after skimming your list, I'd say SpaceMod is probably the one tinkering with surfaces). Let me know if the problem persists.

Seems to work fine. Thanks much!

Started Bob's Mod + Space Exploration Mod today. F&W threw: Had to disable it to start game.

The mod Fish and Wildlife caused a non-recoverable error.
Please report this error to the mod author.

Error while running event fws::on_init()
fws/control.lua:158: attempt to index field 'fertile-soil' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
fws/control.lua:158: in function 'setuptables'
fws/control.lua:230: in function <fws/control.lua:224>

Full mod list? Some mod you have is removing (or possibly renaming) the "fertile-soil" terrain tile FWS adds and this is causing problems because FWS expects things it defines to still be defined after they're defined. From your description I assumed it was probably Exploration.

I just threw on Space Exploration (both with and without its postprocess co-mod) and I still run fine. Not sure which of the Bob's you're using.