Fish grabbing: Weak governance and productive waters are targets for distant water fishing.

Distant water fishing occurs worldwide as foreign fleets fish in the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of other states. We test the hypothesis that host state governance performance is an explanatory factor in observed distant water fishing effort using Global Fishing Watch's fishing effort data obtained from vessels' automatic identification system (AIS). We examine the explanatory power of the World Governance Indicators (WGI), Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, and biophysical fisheries productivity indicators (temperature, oxygen, salinity, nutrients, and primary productivity) on fishing effort from foreign fleets across the four most common gear types (fixed gear, longliners, trawlers, and tuna purse seiners). Our models include both host EEZ fishery productivity indicators and governance indicators with R2 values of 0.97 for longlining, 0.95 trawling, 0.95 for fixed gear and 0.82 for tuna purse seiners. Although a lack of good governance may enable illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has enabled the legal establishment of foreign fishing contracts. However, it is unlikely that fishing contracts are decoupled from economic and political negotiations on other issues. We argue that it is worthwhile to consider the term "fish grabbing", meaning wealthier and politically more powerful states consciously seek to profit from fishing in the waters of often weaker states through developing legal fishing contracts.

Sustainable co-location solutions for offshore wind farms and fisheries need to account for socio-ecological trade-offs.

The spatial expansion of offshore wind farms (OWFs) is key for the transition to a carbon free energy sector. In the North Sea, the sprawl of OWFs is regulated by marine spatial planning (MSP) and results in an increasing loss of space for other sectors such as fisheries. Understanding fisheries benefits of OWFs and mitigating the loss of fishing grounds is key for co-location solutions in MSP. For the German exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the North Sea we conducted a novel socio-ecological assessment of fisheries benefits which combines exploring potential spill-over from an OWF with an experimental brown crab (Cancer pagurus) pot fishery and an economic viability analysis of such a fishery. We arrayed a total of 205 baited pots along transects from an OWF located near the island of Helgoland. After a soaking time of 24 h we retrieved the pots and measured the carapace width (mm), weight (g), and sex of each individual crab. To conclude on cumulative spill-over potentials from all OWFs in the German EEZ and drivers of passive gear fisheries we analysed vessel monitoring system (VMS)-data and computed random forest regressions. Local spill-over mechanisms occurred up to distances of 300 to 500 m to the nearest turbines and revealed an increasing attraction of pot fishing activities to particular OWFs. This corresponds to the observation of constantly increasing fishing effort targeting brown crab likely due to both a growing international demand and stable resource populations at suitable habitats, including OWFs. Our break-even scenarios showed that beam trawlers have the capacities to conduct during summer an opportunistic but economically viable pot fishery. We argue that particularly in the North Sea, where space becomes limited, integrated assessments of the wider environmental and socio-economic effects of planning are crucial for a sustainable co-location of OWFs and fisheries.