For Group of Divers, It’s Dances With Sea Lions : Adventure: Snorkelers swim with marine mammals off Santa Barbara Island to learn about the quarter-ton creatures face to face.

SANTA BARBARA ISLAND — The night before plunging into dark green ocean waters to swim with the sea lions, Aram Kadish had a lot to think about.

Armed with nothing more than a snorkel, a wet suit and a sense of curiosity, he would be cavorting with hordes of the quarter-ton sea mammals.

“I get up and go to work every day and I see these guys who can’t even walk,” said Kadish, 32, an occupational therapist at the Cerebral Palsy / Spastic Children’s Foundation in Van Nuys. “They can’t even go to the bathroom without help. Can’t speak. I feel I should experience everything I can, just because of that.”

Standing in the galley of the Pacific Explorer, a boat bobbing its way to the island 35 miles west of Los Angeles Harbor, Kadish concluded: “Quality of life; that’s really what this is all about.”

Kadish wasn’t alone. The others who signed up for this unusual overnight adventure also spoke of it almost as a calling.

Lori Leach, a 37-year-old from Van Nuys, wanted to change professions and become a veterinarian. For her, the trip seemed a test of her resolve to give up a 15-year career as a medical secretary.

Nancy Brewer, 45, of Thousand Oaks said she once dreamed of being an animal trainer at a marine attraction such as Sea World. Instead, she became a grade school teacher. This trip was a chance to escape her workaday world and come face to face with animals she had only experienced from a distance.

Marjorie Lyman, an auto parts catalogue saleswoman from Sherman Oaks, said she got tired of listening passively to a colleague’s weekend adventures.

The trip was organized by the Learning Tree University in Chatsworth in conjunction with an expedition company, Hydrosphere, and led by former Jacques Cousteau crew member Yehuda Goldman.

After the group traveled through the night, Goldman in the morning instructed the snorkelers on the first rule of the venture. “Don’t touch them,” he said. Strict marine laws prohibit harassment of sea lions and other mammals.

Next rule: “Stay together. Don’t step on urchins or anything living. Don’t panic if you get caught in kelp,” he said.

And finally, in response to the shark question, this reassuring news: “There should be nothing down there, no dangerous marine animals of any kind, that can hurt you.”

Great white sharks do feed on sea lions--but not here, he explained. The water is too warm.

One by one, the snorkelers plopped into the calm waters, buoyed by their wet suits. Most gasped or howled as the 60-degree water seeped beneath their suits before warming to body temperature.

Underwater was a dazzling green and yellow landscape. Thousands of black and purple urchins and anemones littered the rocky gray floor 40 feet below. A trio of striped sea bass swam by. The muted sounds of barking and squealing seemed to be getting louder.

Suddenly, sea lions shot by, swimming in spiraling, corkscrew maneuvers, their dark, silver dollar-size eyes opened wide, unblinking. The animals circled and somersaulted, arched their backs and jetted past, their fluid movements in contrast to the uncoordinated paddle of the humans.

As the snorkelers surfaced to adjust their masks and get a breath, they looked at one another in wonder, shaking their heads and smiling. “Oh my God!” was about all anyone could say.

Goldman said he has seen that look many times since he began the trips where you get “two different species checking each other out, totally curious about each other.”

Another wave of sea lions--some as long as eight feet--departed from the rocky shore of the square-mile island to join the commotion, peering at the swimmers and sniffing their faces, blowing bubbles and swimming by within millimeters.

“It’s like a little piece of heaven on earth,” said Leach, climbing back aboard the boat. “Awe-inspiring. Raw nature. Raw power.”

The experience, she said, bolsters her resolve to become a veterinarian.

“I think I realized, in my heart, that I belong with animals,” she said. “. . . I think I got confidence that I can go out and do this.”

Nancy Brewer, who teaches second grade in Simi Valley, said, “I think it was the best day I ever had in my life.” She left her husband and teen-age children at home after failing to interest them in the trip.

“There was this vicariousness about it, and intimacy,” she said. “For a short time, I was part of their world.”

Brewer was one of only four snorkelers who went back into the water after a lunch break. Some of the others found the experience unnerving.

Lyman had gotten cold and she couldn’t quite get the hang of breathing through a short plastic tube. But mostly, she said, she felt out of her element. Even so, she agreed it was an experience she wouldn’t soon forget.

Nor would the others.

“What do you take with you from this world, when you leave?” Kadish asked as the boat headed back to Los Angeles Harbor. “Experiences. That’s it.”