A taxonomic study was carried out on strain PC39T, which was isolated from a PAHs-degrading consortium, enriched from a deep seawater sample collected from the Indian Ocean. The isolate was Gram-negative, short rods, no-mobile. Growth was observed at salinities from 1 to 36 ％ and at temperatures from 4 to 40, and it was able to degrade Tween 80 but no gelatin. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rDNA sequence reveals that strain PC39T forms a novel lineage close to the genus Salinisphaera, with the highest similarity to Salinisphaera sedimenticola T31B1T (92.7 ％), followed by S. Dokdonensis CL-ES537 (91.8 ％), Salinisphaera shabanensis E1L3AT (91.7 ％) and S. Hydrothermalis EPR70T (91.2 ％), all other species had sequence similarity below 89 ％. The dominant fatty acids were Ci8:ifl>9c (30.52 ％), Cig:0 (18.91 ％), C19:0coSc cyclo (13.57 ％), Sum Feature 8 (C18:)(a7c/a)6c) (10.35 ％)C,6:0 (8.28 ％), Sum Feature 7 (Ci9:I?c and/or ECL 18.846 and/or Ci9:0colQc cyclo) (8.01 ％), and. The G+C content of the chromosomal DNA was 68.2 mol％. Phylogenetic analysis, as well as physiological and biochemical tests, showed that strain PC39T was different from all members of the genus Salinisphaera. Strain PC39T therefore represents a novel genus, for which the name Halophibacterium profundimaris gen. Nov. Sp. Nov. Is