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Everyone “aqua dumps” on ‘Survivor.’ And now the secret is out in the open for more casual fans of the show.
There are casual fans and there are super fans, and Survivor notably has large swaths of both. When it comes to the super fans, we listen to every podcast, read every Reddit noticeboard, and play our own versions of Survivor, whether on Discord, at-home games, or simply a fantasy league. And one thing we’ve known about for a while just came out during a Survivor episode: the aqua dump.
In Season 46, one player discusses aqua dumps during tribal council, leading many viewers to wonder what that actually means. But we’re here to tell you that it means exactly what you think. And the term has been used for years to describe a very common Survivor practice.
An “aqua dump” in ‘Survivor’ is when players poop in the ocean.
Everyone always wants to know where and when Survivor players take care of their business. The show is still reality television, so some people doubt that production doesn’t at least give players a toilet. But the reality is that players are only given what we see on screen, which is barely anything in the New Era. They have to earn their pot and machete in a Sweat or Savvy Challenge, and they aren’t given flint until they win immunity.
But no matter what, they’re never given a toilet. And there are several reasons we don’t see this on camera. It would be inappropriate for the camera operators to follow contestants while they go to the proverbial bathroom, so contestants are told to just let them know not to follow them in those moments. Plus, it’s just not very interesting to watch someone go to the bathroom. And through the many generations of Survivor, a special term has been coined for going number two called aqua dumping.
‘Survivor’ players have been aqua dumping for almost as long as the show has been on.
We can’t confirm whether players aqua dumped in the earliest seasons, and we can promise that they definitely didn’t do this during Survivor: Africa — there was no aqua to dump in! But Season 4, Survivor: Marquesas, marks the earliest known aqua dump, even though it wasn’t allowed at the time. Every location has different laws around pooping in the ocean, but Fiji seems to allow it.
In Marquesas, however, John Carroll of the Rotu alliance revealed how his aqua dump nearly shut down the game. “Jeff Probst stopped the show and threatened to shut down production because I was pooping in the ocean. We were told a few rules before the game began … When you have to poop, dig a hole (with an oar) and then fill it back in.”
He went on: “What they didn’t tell us is that the ground was hard as rock and without a spade you would crap your pants before you could finish digging your hole. So after crapping my pants one night and spending hours trying to clean my shorts in the dark with nothing but embarrassment and sand, I embarked on my evil plan to pollute the world’s oceans by taking massive dumps in the Pacific.”
Now 42 seasons later, aqua dumping is a common practice on Survivor. Some castaways prefer to poop on dry land by digging a hole and then filling the hole in. However, that uses a lot more calories and energy than simply pooping in the ocean. The downside of pooping in the ocean can be miscalculating the tides or, if it’s cold out, getting wet. Millennials vs. Gen X player Hannah Shapiro actually spoke with several past players about their Survivor pooping experiences.
In Season 46, the Siga tribe is known as the “vibes tribe” since they play games on the beach, salsa dance together, and hang out with each other almost all of the time. However, they revealed at their first tribal council that they don’t aqua dump together, even if they do everything else as a tribe! And based on Tim’s confessionals about not pooping at all, the lack of food proves that they probably don’t aqua dump as much as we’d think.
New episodes of Survivor air every Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST on CBS.
