Recent advances in analytical instrumentation and chemical separation of trace metals,along with ultra-clean sampling methods,have led to improvements in both sensitivity and accuracy of measurements of some key trace metals,such as cadmium,zinc,iron,nickel.Although some of these metals are environmental pollutants and may be hazardous to human health,they have important biochemical functions in marine micro-organisms and,as such,play a significant role in regulating the global carbon cycle.Their oceanic distribution is very similar to that of major nutrients suggesting uptake of trace metals by marine phytoplankton at the surface and remineralization at depth.The relationships between macro-and micronutrient and their potential use in past climate studies has led to considerable efforts to try to understand the cycling of nutrient trace metals in the modern “Greenhouse” world.Stable isotopes of heavy transition metals are relatively new tools that offer the potential to unravel to the required detail the mechanism(s)of nutrients cycling which has thus far proved elusive.I will summarize recently published and new seawater Cd and Zn isotope data obtained within the frame of the international GEOTRACES program and discuss the implications of these results on the processes and sources controlling their global oceanic distribution.The usefulness of these novel proxies in oceanography,paleoceanography and geobiology as well as environmental studies will be highlighted with particular emphasis on case studies of modern mineral dust records tracing the evolution of natural and anthropogenic sources over the last century.