Globalstar, Inc. (NYSE MKT:GSAT) announced that the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (UM) will be deploying 550 SPOT Trace satellite trackers in their continued research expedition with the Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE), which is dedicated to forecasting the fate of oil dispersed into the environment to help inform and guide response teams.

This research is an extension of an ongoing project that launched in 2012 after the BP oil spill to monitor how pollutants behave in normal and emergency conditions. Using satellite technology, SPOT devices allow users to communicate from remote locations around the globe, transmitting messages and GPS coordinates. SPOT technology will be used by UM to calculate the speed and path of currents. The information collected will be combined with previous data to develop interconnected modeling systems. The previous study, executed in 2016, collected over 11 million data points.

CARTHE research is broad reaching, providing data on the ocean surface for navigation, energy generation, drilling and climate modeling.  Changes in the ocean due to location and seasons require research to be conducted in various locations in the Gulf. The upcoming study will launch near the Louisiana coastline with the goal of exploring why the area was hit particularly hard by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Tamay Özgökmen, Professor of Ocean Sciences and CARTHE director, noted that SPOT has been an integral part of the university's ongoing studies in the Gulf of Mexico. Due to the large number of messages required for these experiments, it is critical that the devices used are accurate and the data affordable. SPOT technology meets this need and the level of customer service provided by SPOT has been exceptional.