The attack on the USS Cole (DDG 67) on October 12th, 2000 in the Yemen port of Aden highlighted the value bulkhead seals provide to ships. On that occasion, a bulkhead seal failed to prevent water from entering the auxiliary machine room No. 2 and nearly caused a catastrophic flooding of the ship. The legacy seal technology was based on a constantly contacting design. The constant contacting nature of the old seal led to wear which ultimately led to premature failure and endangerment to the ship and her sailors. Investigations concluded that the problems with the legacy product are fleet wide! Following this event, the United States Navy initiated an SBIR program to find a replacement for the wearing bulkhead seal product. Midé proposed a novel and simple design based on hydrogel technology that would only contact the shaft during a flooding event. The innovation was simple yet elegant and offered a significant improvement in the safety of Navy ships while also substantially reducing the total ownership cost of bulkhead seals to the US Navy.