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Does that mean they can only get ADS-B data from the tracker every 90 minutes?

I would assume so yeah. I'd be interested to know if there's any reasonably affordable satellite system that you could use for closer to real-time data.

My company, Spire, is doing fundamentally the same type of tracking as is described here, except for ships using AIS. By building a constellation of satellites with different orbits, and using a network of groundstations, you can achieve near-real time data. These would be no exception, it's just a matter of scaling up from one to n satellites and having the coverage of a groundstation network to support them.

Oh I read about your company in the Economist recently, I thought that was really cool! Here's the article, for anyone interested: http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/spa... (the bit on Spire is in section 3). That you're also doing atmospheric measurements for weather forecasting seems pretty neat.

The Iridium NEXT satellites to be launched by SpaceX soon (well, we'll see about that ...) are equipped with ADS-B receivers, see e.g. http://aireon.com/resources/iridium-next/

No, the boat doesn't talk to the satellite. They're two different methods they're using to improve coverage.

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