YOUNG MARZENA GODECKI DOESN'T SINK, SHE SWIMS AS DISNEY'S `OCEAN GIRL'

Marzena Godecki got the starring part in a weekly television series in a rather unusual way.

The producers took her out in a boat, more or less tossed her into a somewhat dangerous patch of ocean and watched to see how she would react."The audition process involved me showing them if I could swim or not, especially out in the ocean," said Godecki, who stars as "Ocean Girl" on the Disney Channel. "They wanted to see if I was comfortable or not."

Godecki survived not only the ocean, but an audition process that began with more than 700 candidates for the part.

"When we got down to the top 30, we started to look at their physical and psychological profile," said creator/executive producer Jonathan M. Shiff. "Mainly because we're filming in open water where there are real sharks in deep, cold sea. And we wanted someone who was both an athlete, and actress (and) was very steady under pressure in case sharks came and had a look around."

"Ocean Girl," which begins its second season tonight at 8:30 p.m. on Disney, is a delightful Australian show that's become a hit in countries around the world. Designed to appeal to youngsters, it mixes adventures, science fiction and environmentalism.

Sixteen-year-old Godecki stars as Neri, the "Ocean Girl" whose best friend is a 40-foot humpback whale named Charley, with whom she both swims and communicates telepathically.

The young actress said that most of the questions she gets from young kids have to do with her relationship with Charley: Does she really swim with him? Can she really talk to him?

"No, I wish," she said with a laugh. "There's a model that we actually swim with because you can't get so close to humpback whales."

Neri was befriended last season by a couple of young boys who live in an undersea city, and her adventures are intertwined with that duo and their friends. There are, of course, the requisite bad guys - including an evil scientist who capture Neri in tonight's season pre-miere.

In the course of the 13 episodes, Neri will learn more about herself, her origins (which turn out to be extraterrestrial), why she's on Earth - and that she has a younger sister.

"In the first series, she didn't know much about her background. She didn't know about the outside world," Godecki said. "She'd never come in contact with it.

"And in the second series, she's quite comfortable with the outside world. . . . And she starts finding out about her past, about her father, about her sister. You see Neri mature a lot more."

"Ocean Girl" is filmed on some astoundingly beautiful locations, including Australia's Great Barrier Reef and rain forests in Queensland. Despite all that beauty, Godecki will tell you that the water is still plenty cold - but it didn't scare her off.