Being a contestant on Survivor, which debuted its 46th season last week, seems like an undeniably humbling experience. You are quasi-marooned in a beautiful but remote location, stripped of all the comforts of modernity, and pushed to your physical limits. On top of that, you have next to no privacy—you’re surrounded by a crew of producers and cameramen, as well as your fellow contestants (who may or may not be conspiring against you). This denial of solitude goes some way towards explaining why, of all the questions viewers have about the behind-the-scenes workings of the show, one of the most persistent is, “How do Survivor contestants poop?”
For the most part, the show does not openly address the contestants’ bathroom habits for obvious reasons, but there are two methods that remain pretty consistent from season to season. One is colloquially called the aquadump, which means exactly what it sounds like: squatting in the surf and going right in the ocean. The other is simply pooping on land—and each tribe of contestants on Survivor will designate an area of their beach to be used for this purpose, which is commonly referred to among producers and cast members as Coconut Grove.
Based on conversations with two previous show contestants, the aquadump is the vastly preferable option. “I only land-pooped twice,” season 44 winner Yam Yam Arocho tells SELF. Arocho, whose infectious good nature and sense of humor made him a fan favorite, even made his grand entrance on the show by saying, “I can’t wait to not eat, not shower, not brush my teeth, poop in the ocean…. Bring it.” While Arocho was clearly being tongue in cheek there, he says that aquadumping is actually surprisingly easy to adjust to, albeit with one consideration. “I guess it would be like pooping in space, kind of—it floats.”
Season 45 finalist Katurah Topps, a civil rights lawyer in Brooklyn, tells SELF that aquadumping felt “freeing as hell,” but also? Bizarre. “How real are we getting here?” she asks, laughing. “It’s a little weird to watch it wash away. That’s like the surrealest feeling. Being like, ‘Huh. This is my life.’”
Both contestants say that the ocean experience still felt far more hygienic and refreshing than the alternative: pooping in plain air. “When you go on land, you’re wiping off with leaves,” Topps says. “It just doesn’t feel good. In the ocean, you walk out feeling so clean.”
Despite contestants’ preferences, they don’t always have a choice, as the show’s producers don’t allow people into the ocean at night for safety reasons. So while the name might evoke a surfside resort bar where one can sip mai tais rather than a place where you bury your bowel movements in the sand like a cat, the occasional visit to Coconut Grove is simply a necessary evil.
Arocho says he and his tribe mates collectively agreed on an organized procedure to make using that stretch of beach slightly less gross: “You dig a little hole, poop, cover it, then take two sticks and do an ‘X’ on top, so you don’t dig up somebody else’s poop.” But he still avoided this method as much as possible, as did Topps, who says, “The worst part is when you can’t poop in the ocean.”
