The National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility (NOSAMS) has completed the carbon isotope analysis of a major fraction of the 13,500 sea water samples collected in the framework of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) from three of the major world oceans between 1991 and 1996. We will describe the AMS technique employed at NOSAMS and, using 3-D data visualization techniques we will demonstrate the present status of the data set and offer some preliminary conclusions about the distribution of natural and anthropogenic14Cin the oceans. In particular, we will be able to compare some of the data with results from the Geochemical Ocean Sections Study (GEOSECS, 1972–1978) to obtain information about the time dependence of oceanic circulation processes, tracing the14Csignal introduced into the oceans during the atmospheric nuclear bomb tests in the 1950’s and 1960’s. ©1999 American Institute of Physics.