AVALON – When John Kauterman looks out over the wetlands surrounding the area, he sees the beauty of the natural environment with the wildlife, plants and water that draw visitors and residents to the shore.
But he also sees waste and debris impacting these vital ecosystems and is committed to cleaning it up while hoping to make others aware how their actions, or lack of actions, can threaten the natural beauty.
His mission, through a non-profit he and Kevin Doughterty co-founded called The Tidelands Initiative, is to protect and beautify these areas, which he says are widely ignored by local and state agencies and other environmental cleanup organizations, but which provide critical habitats for wildlife.

“The wetlands of New Jersey serve as natural water filters and storm barriers while offering beautiful spaces for both wildlife and people to enjoy,” Dougherty said. “However, pollution, driven deep into the marshes by storms and tidal flooding, poses a serious threat to their health and longevity. By organizing hands-on cleanup events, The Tidelands Initiative brings together volunteers to remove debris and restore these ecosystems to their natural state.”
In addition to cleanups, they aim to raise awareness about wetland conservation through community outreach and educational initiatives. “By fostering a sense of responsibility and appreciation for these natural areas, we hope to inspire sustainable practices that prevent waste from entering the wetlands in the first place,” Dougherty added.
For Kauterman, who grew up in Avalon, boating around the marshes and exploring the wetlands was part of his childhood experiences. He surfed and fished, ultimately becoming a commercial scallop fisherman. He recently returned from back-to-back trips over 17 days to take a few of his days off between trips to remove another abandoned dock.
In some cases, storms rip the structures apart, causing them to float with the tides throughout the marshes. In most cases, however, he said contractors unleash the old docks or homeowners shove them across the road, into the waterways or fields when they decide to build new docks.
“The tides coming in and out move the debris in and out,” he explained. “Some of these elevated areas are used for nesting by migratory birds. You have to work around the wildlife, and sometimes that means waiting for the tide to be right so you can get in there and remove the debris, or wait until the birds have fled the nest.
“Stone Harbor is the abandoned dock capital,” he said, noting that he’s pulled over 20 such docks from the water. “Most of them are unleashed by contractors and left to decay. It seems that if it’s off their (homeowner) property, it’s not their problem anymore. I’m not a bad guy, I’m just trying to achieve what I think is a basic responsiblity: to keep our wetlands clean and safe.”
That’s the thought-process he uses as he pulls another abandoned dock from the water, this time in Avalon. It’s in an area of grasslands that he’s cleaned twice since April, yet he is still finding plastic bottles and other debris along with the abandoned dock.
As he motors across the water, he points to a bridge in the borough where many people launch their boats into the water. Sadly, trash and debris piled up in that area because there were no trash receptacles nearby. On a recent tour, he was proud when he saw recently placed trash cans in use and no litter or debris nearby.
“They’re working,” he said, referring to the trash can, which he said needs to be emptied about every four days. I think people will do the right thing at the end of the day, but we have to help them get there.
“People seem to think if it’s not on their property, it’s not their problem” he said. “The wetlands can be owned by the state, county or even privately owned. I’m just trying to clean up the area. I’m certainly not perfect, but it would be great if people were more conscious about what they do with their trash.

“Going green is easy to say,” he added, “but changing behavior is anything but easy. How can people worry about windmills when they can’t keep their own backyards clean?”
Kauterman mentioned that plastic bags, essentially banned since May 2022 in the state, eventually sink. “Plastic straws have been around for 20 years,” he added, “and we’ll be picking them up for the rest of eternity. Plastic bags are still around, causing hazards to wildlife. These items, while now banned, are everywhere.”
It’s straws, plastic bags, glass and plastic bottles, construction debris and other trash, that Kauterman has filled hundreds of trash bags full with the dream that “some day he will have the entire county waterways cleaned. My dream is that we will have an all-volunteer crew clean the waterways from Long Beach Island down to Cape May one day,” he said, “and eventually clean the entire state.”
He started his wetlands preservation campaign picking up trash along Avalon Boulevard about three years ago, often finding items that flew off the backs of garbage trucks or out of uncovered dumpsters. “I kept going after that first year,” he said, adding it’s his way of “giving back to the community.”
He figures he spent about 300 hours just picking up trash that first year, and then started tracking his time spent figuring out some of the logistics, such as who has responsibility to pick up the trash bags or how best to get into and out of an area to remove the debris. That second year he said he spent about 700 hours collecting trash.
“There are areas near the Garden State Parkway where trash collects,” he noted, “and once I see it, I can’t unsee it. I then started looking into why certain areas seemed to be collecting more trash items than other areas.”
He found, for example, that trash was collecting in the phragmite fields, a common reed and invasive species that is found all over the county and can negatively impact biodiversity and the wildlife habitat. “Trash was collecting in the areas facing north-east,” he noted. “We’ve had at least one storm a year from the north-east over the last 60-70 years, so there’s a lot of debris that piled up in these areas.”
Initially, he focused his clean-up efforts in those areas. “I talked with bottle hunters and they told me that usually on the bottom of the bottle is the date it was manufactured,” he said. “You can find bottles from the 1960s and 1970s then see the turn into plastics in these catch areas.”
While being a commercial fisherman is “tough” work, Kauterman said removing debris is also “tough work because you are working in some remote areas. I stepped on a nail recently, but my truck was 25 yards away. I hesitate to bring in volunteers to help unless I know they can take care of themselves. If we had a group of volunteers and some one stepped on a nail and we were 20 or 40 minutes away from the road, bad things can happen.”

While he’s hesitant to involve others for fear of their safety, The Tidelands Initiative is a non-profit agency that has been the recipient of donations by community members supporting their cause. A boat to help continue their efforts was recently donated by a family from Avalon. However, with the new boat comes expenses, so financial contributions are always welcome to help with items such as litter bags, dump fees, a trailer and more.
“Grass roots donations have given us operating income to last about 1 year, covering boat and trailer maintenance and repair, tools, fuel, webhosting, and insurance,” Dougherty noted. “We’d like to increase awareness by increasing our marketing from zero dollars to something more than zero when we can afford it.
“We would also consider different equipment to increase output if we had a budget for it,” he added. “We definitely would like to avoid going out of pocket ever again. Giving our time for free should be enough in my mind, because this isn’t the only thing I (or the biggest thing) that I support.”
“I used to think people didn’t care, but I don’t think keeping the wetlands clean is on people’s radars,” Kauterman said about their efforts. “For me, I think we can achieve clean waterways with hard work. I always feel like I am falling behind and not getting enough cleaned up, but I hope to finish Avalon this winter and make that the gold standard for cleanliness.”
However, the road to achieve that “gold standard” hasn’t been easy. Dougherty often spends hours tracking down the right governing body to pick up the trash collected from the wetlands, or to take responsibility for cleaning them.

Both men pointed to efforts in Avalon to force dumpster companies to use form-fitting covers when in transit. Dougherty spent hours videoing trash falling from trash trucks as proof, and nearly a year later, a bungee ordinance was finally passed requiring covers.
“Our ask is about connecting to those in local and state government to bring John in in an official capacity and possibly contract with him for wetlands maintenance, which is desperately needed at the state and local level,” Dougherty said. “We hope just by raising awareness we will eventually result in that!
“It’s not on anyone’s radar,” he pointed out. “Our goal would be to have the governing officials say they recognize the problem and offer to help in any way they can. Unless there is buy-in, this will be a never-ending problem.”
“I don’t want to be treated as a nuisance,” Kauterman stressed. “My goal is to raise awareness to have a clean county. Cape May County is 60% water, so it’s important that we preserve what we have for future generations, and today.”