Sustainable Futures
Health Futures
Protecting Aquatic Life. Protecting Our Future.
Across the planet, fish and aquatic species are struggling to survive in waters that are warming, polluted, and changing faster than ecosystems can adapt. These threats are already reshaping our lakes, our food systems, and the health of our environment. The University of Waterloo is taking bold action to confront this crisis through the new Waterloo Aquatic Threats in Environmental Research Facility, known as the WATER Facility.
This remarkable facility gives researchers the power to simulate real-world stressors and uncover how climate change, disease agents, contaminants, and human-driven pollution are impacting aquatic life. It is one of the largest facilities of its kind in Ontario and can support a vast range of species, from rainbow trout to tropical fish and amphibians. Its advanced water monitoring technology and sustainable design reduce water use by 90 percent while creating safe, controlled environments that reveal the true impacts of environmental change across multiple generations of aquatic organisms.
Supporting the WATER Facility means advancing Waterloo’s Sustainable Futures and Health and Well-being Global Futures, two of the University’s grand challenges that aim to protect ecosystems and strengthen the resilience of communities worldwide.
Your support will help safeguard aquatic life and secure a healthier, more sustainable future for our planet.
Impacts of the Waterloo Aquatic Threats in Environmental Research Facility
Predict, prevent and mitigate population- and community-level collapses in freshwater ecosystems
The WATER Facility will allow researchers to understand exactly how water warming, decreases in oxygen, and extreme weather reshape the health of aquatic life. Through this understanding, they will be able to develop the predictive tools needed to identify and prevent catastrophic losses of freshwater and marine fish populations before they happen.
Join us in securing the biodiversity of future aquatic life.
Shape the resilience of local aquatic species across generations
Researchers are using the WATER Facility to study how stresses like climate change, pathogens, and water contaminants interact and affect a variety of fish species over the long term. Quickly multiplying zebra fish populations allow the study of the impacts of these stresses through multiple lifecycles and across reproduction, while the prolonged outcomes of stress can be studied in fish like tilapia and tuna with longer lifespans.
This is more than aquatic science.
This is a turning point in the well-being of our home planet, led by Waterloo Science.
Develop next-generation forecasting tools that can identify when species are approaching ecological tipping points
Using cutting edge experimental setups in integrative physiology, genomics, ecotoxicology, pathogen challenge, and real-world exposure systems, the WATER Facility advances the tools needed to mimic real-world environmental stress conditions in controlled laboratory settings. With your support, Waterloo Science researchers can take control of extreme aquatic conditions, opening the door to insights into how much stress the wildlife can handle.
By bridging the gap between lab and fieldwork, Waterloo researchers will be better prepared to identify and prevent aquatic threats before they happen.
Safeguard biodiversity before irreversible declines occur
We share our home planet with a stunning biodiversity of life. As caretakers of our planet, we hold the responsibility to protect and steward the habitats and organisms who share this world. By intervening on human-caused changes to our water systems — including water temperature rising from climate change, contaminants from human pollution, and changing oxygen saturation levels in our lakes and rivers — we can safeguard the intricacy and wonder of the life on our planet.
This is the resilience of our aquatic ecosystems, as we steward our rivers, wetlands and oceans for a vibrant future.
Read updates about Waterloo's latest research at the WATER Facility
Professor Brian Dixon and his students are studying parasites that live on monkfish and how they affect the fish’s immune system. This project includes Maya Jacewicz, a third-year Biology honours co-op student who spent her summer doing field work in Nova Scotia.
The new multimillion-dollar facility will allow researchers to bridge the gap between lab and fieldwork, and aims to simulate and research aquatic stressors and threats so that we are better prepared to prevent current and future problems.
Together, we reimagine possibility.
Your support for the WATER Facility ensures our ecosystems are thriving and healthy, and the impacts of climate change are minimized on our food supplies.