Martin Peters’ love of the water was fostered at an early age. His father often took him on trips down the Patuxent River in Maryland searching for bluefish. They fished most of the day, catching toadfish and Norfolk spot. His father could recall the river teeming with bluefish when he was young, but this fishing trip took place during the ’70s, when Chesapeake Bay and surrounding waters were quite unwell, before the Clean Water Act.

At the end of the day, his father caught a bluefish. He showed it to Martin and then released it. “He said he didn’t want to be the guy who caught the last bluefish on the Patuxent,” Peters says. “That lesson stuck.”

After joining Yamaha in 2006, Peters has been at the forefront of the company’s sustainability efforts. Today, he’s director of external affairs at the Yamaha U.S. Marine Business Unit. He leads the teams that create communication strategies to support the marine brand. In January 2017, he was appointed to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Sanctuary Business Advisory Council as one of 15 members serving a three-year term.

Today, Peters fishes the shores of coastal Georgia in his Skeeter SX240. He and his wife, Dianne, live in Marietta, Ga. Their son recently graduated from law school, and they have a daughter and stepdaughter in college. When Peters is not on the water, he enjoys working on his 1997 Lotus Esprit, a British sports car (think James Bond). He also has a Trabant, which is a German-built car powered by a 2-stroke, air-cooled engine.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and space.

Were there boating influences in your life other than your dad?

I had an uncle who lived in Danville, Va., and he kept a boat on Hyco Lake just across the state line near Roxboro, N.C. He taught me to waterski and how to run a boat. My sisters and I spent many summer vacations there. I have begged and paid for fishing trips for many years until recently acquiring a Skeeter SX240. I like to inshore fish in coastal Georgia.

You were named director of external affairs in March. Tell us about your professional background.

In addition to the NOAA Business Advisory Council, I serve on the board of trustees for the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, the Energy & Natural Resources Committee for the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, and on the Government Relations Committee of the American Sportfishing Association. I was chairman of the Communication Committee for the Center for Sportfishing Policy, chairman of BoatPAC for the National Marine Manufacturers Association and chairman of Treat Lightly!, a nonprofit organization that advocates for ethical land use and public land access.

Weren’t you recognized by the ASA for your conservation efforts?

Yes, in 2019, I received the ASA Fisheries Conservation Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to fisheries conservation and recreational boating and fishing.

What are the origins of the Yamaha Rightwaters program?

They go back almost 30 years. As a company, Yamaha for a long time has been engaged in conservation. The event that got us started was the Kenai River Classic in Alaska. That long preceded me, and we still support the event to this day. We also started working with the Coastal Conservation Association. About 10 or 12 years ago, we began supporting the construction of reefs. We were also involved with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission with invasive lionfish. We said we should make this strategic, and have goals and objectives, and we created Rightwaters in 2019.

What are the four pillars of Yamaha Rightwaters?

Habitat restoration is the first, and includes creating artificial reefs and preserving the undersea environment. Second is support for scientific research. There’s a lot of research lacking in our government’s ability to manage fisheries and conservation, and anything we could do to contribute to the body of research would be valuable. We’re doing research projects on redfish, and we’re working with shellfish in Apalachicola Bay in Florida.

The third pillar is the management of aquatic invasive species. That started with the lionfish efforts with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Working with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, the NMMA and the ASA, we helped fund a white paper. It assembled a group of commissioners with expertise in this area, and they put together recommendations that became the white paper that we’ll take to Capitol Hill.

Fourth is reducing marine debris, and environmental stewardship education. We want to engage people in communities to pick up marine debris, mostly plastics that we find on shores and in rivers. During the Bassmaster Classic on the Tennessee River near Knoxville, we worked with the organization Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful, and together, we pulled 7,000 pounds of trash out of the river.

What are you most excited about for Rightwaters, and what past accomplishments are you most proud of?

For current work, I am hopeful that we will have a good result from our research projects designed to determine the carbon sequestration value of oyster reefs. There is a project with Harte Research Institute in the Gulf of Mexico, and one with Georgia Southern University in Georgia. These will help us scope future projects.

For past work, our plastic recycling project is truly circular. We are turning polyethylene and polypropylene back into chemicals they came from so that they can be used again rather than use new fossil fuel.

What is kando?

For us in Yamaha Marine, kando is the joy associated with being outdoors, having the wind in your hair, the sun at your back, and, for me, having a fishing rod in my hand.

What are the legislative strategies that Rightwaters is implementing to help advance the marine industry?

One is legislation that would support us on combating invasive species. It could come in the form of funding, and the opportunity to get federal and state agencies to work together. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may not know what Fish and Wildlife or the Tennessee Valley Authority is doing. We’re growing awareness on the need to tackle this together.

The other thing really relates to Scope 3 emissions. Carbon dioxide affects water quality, and we’re pursuing sustainable fuels.

Do you see electrically powered boats becoming viable?

If we did electrify, the typical boat replacement rate is 2%, and it would take 40 years to replace the current fleet of boats with electric ones. If we can get regulatory agencies to provide pathways for the approval of sustainable fuels, we can decarbonize much more quickly. A perfect example of this is what we showed during America’s Boating Congress. EcoGen 93 is carbon-neutral fuel. Ethanol is 7% if it comes from the appropriate source, and EcoGen improves carbon neutrality by 30% over ethanol. If we get that into every boat on the water, it would produce 10% less carbon dioxide.

Will companies have to walk back their electrification promises?

With current battery technology and the range that’s necessary to meet the needs of most boaters, it’s not there. If people want to change their expectations, they can have non-planing vessels that are electrified. We have our electric propulsion system, HARMO, that we introduced in 2021. Our approach is one of deploying multiple technologies and driving them forward in our own products.

What goals does Rightwaters have for conservation, sustainability and reduced emissions?

We measure the amount of plastic we recover. We are gathering the polyethylene and polypropylene, and returning it back to the Atlanta area. A company called Nexus Circular takes the plastic and converts it back into raw materials. It gets turned back into close to what it came from, and it is used to make more plastics. We set a percentage increase for plastics recycling every year. We set a measurement for the amount of refuse that we want. For carbon dioxide, we made a pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035, and we’ve made a pledge to have all our products be carbon neutral by 2050.

Is that part of the Yamaha Motor Group Environmental Plan 2050?

Yes. We are part of Yamaha Motor Group, and the company realizes that the expectations around the world are mounting toward those companies that undertake environmental, social and governance issues, including the signing of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. Our strength is creating lightweight, compact products with smaller environmental footprints, and we will continue aiming for a sustainable society. We are accelerating efforts to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from our business activities and products while simultaneously striving to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from the whole supply chain.

What other reuse and sustainability steps is Yamaha taking in its manufacturing operations?

These things are evolving. There is a fair amount of recycling going on with materials. Any polyethylene and polypropylene we are recycling. We have long recycled stainless steel, and, as far as aluminum is concerned, that has been recycled for a long time.

What is the greatest threat to angler and boater access in the United States?

The greatest concern is the 10-knot speed limit that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration proposed to protect the North Atlantic right whale. It’s the most serious threat to boating and access up and down the Atlantic coast. The greatest contributor from our team is Stacy Tatman, marine regulatory affairs manager for Yamaha Marine. She has worked in fisheries, and she has a law degree. There is a Georgia research project she is leading and is putting the technologies into the field to test their effectiveness.

Are there any other access issues that Rightwaters is working on now?

There are always access issues in individual states, and the 10-knot speed limit is pretty consuming. There is a similar law being proposed to protect the Rice’s whale in the Gulf of Mexico. It has no component of vessel length, so it would apply to all lengths of boats. It would have a big effect in the panhandle of Florida. No boater wishes to harm a whale. We must find common-sense solutions that do not prevent us from accessing where we go fishing.

More recently, in June, we supported the 2023 Emerald Coast Open, where 144 divers removed 24,699 invasive lionfish from the Gulf of Mexico. Events like this help foster a healthy marine environment and educate the public about the damage a large lionfish population can cause. We will continue to support this tournament and applaud the effort to help the Gulf of Mexico thrive as a strong fishery.

What is the carbon-neutral working group at Yamaha?

The carbon neutral working group is a team from across all of Yamaha in North America. That team has been tasked with determining our carbon footprint and determining our strategy to move us forward. The group reports to the Carbon Neutral Strategic, which is led by our Yamaha U.S. president. We’ve pulled together a footprint and a strategy, and are very engaged in the next steps.

What are some examples of next steps?

Solar is probably the biggest and the most outwardly visible one. We have a program to move forward with solar projects on many marine facilities in the country. We also have many initiatives designed to reduce power use within the facilities. There are a whole range of options depending on the plant and the age of its equipment and relative efficiency of the equipment they’re using.

The focus right now for the carbon neutral working group is Scope 1 and Scope 2, which primarily surrounds operations. Within that realm is the use of fossil fuels at facilities. How do we replace gas where appropriate with electricity? How do we reduce the use of fossil fuels in how we move things around the facility?

Do the states work with you on incentives for upgrading to more efficient equipment?

Most states have some kind of support for solar, but it is all dependent on the individual situation.

What are some of the biggest challenges with implementing sustainability in manufacturing?

Replacing fossil fuels is a challenge. Natural gas is used in some processes, and in some cases, a potential electrical component may not even exist. We are just getting started in this area.

What are some examples of Yamaha Rightwaters partnering with local environmental groups and organizing cleanup efforts?

Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful, Keep the Golden Isles Beautiful, Potomac Riverkeeper and Conch Republic Marine Army are just some of the organizations. Kathleen Gibi, the executive director at Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful has built an impressive group of volunteers, and we worked with them to pull thousands of pounds of plastic from the waterway during the Bassmaster Classic. Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful has removed more than 500,000 pounds of trash in the past five years from popular fisheries like Pickwick, Chickamauga, Cherokee and Loudon. We supplied two 90-hp V MAX SHO outboards to power their 26-foot workboats.

What about your partnership with Ocearch?

Last year, we announced a three-year agreement with Ocearch to provide outboards for its chase boats. Ocearch is focused on research and preservation of great white and tiger sharks, among other species. They tag them and follow their movements along the East Coast of the United States. In honor of the partnership with Rightwaters, Ocearch recently tagged a white shark and named it Umi, which means sea or ocean in Japanese. She’s a 13-foot, 3-inch fish that weighed 1,225 pounds. The cool thing is we can go on the Ocearch website and track her movements. We’re proud to support groups doing this kind of research. 

This article was originally published in the July 2023 issue.