This work describes a cooperation strategy and method to compress data to be transmitted between multiple underwater gliders used to delineate oil spills in the ocean. In the cooperation strategy, the survey area is discretized into a series of blocks. One glider is used as a scout to map the oil in each block. The scout glider then sends the locations of potential information-rich oil patches to follower gliders to conduct detailed surveys of the oil patch areas. To compress the data to be transmitted between gliders, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) method was used to classify the boundaries of the oil patches. Measurements from the scout glider were mapped onto a grid map to decrease the quantity of data being processed and a clustering method was proposed to be applied prior to the SVM to simplify the characteristics of the data sets. Two clustering methods were compared through simulations, of which a Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise method was found to be more accurate and reliable than a mean-shift method in classifying the correct number of clusters. Based on the classified boundaries of the oil patches, the scout glider could then send compressed data to its followers so that they could further investigate the patches. The proposed method compresses the information communicated between gliders which in turn was found in simulations to improve the efficiency of real-time underwater communication and cooperation between networked gliders.