Pyropia haitanensis is an economically important mariculture crop in China and has a high research value for several life phenomena, for example environmental tolerance. To explore the mechanisms underlying these characteristics, gene expression has been investigated at the whole transcriptome level. Gene expres-sion studies using quantitative real-time PCR should start by selecting an appropriate internal control gene;therefore, the absolute expression abundance of six housekeeping genes (18S rRNA (18S), ubiquitin-conju-gating enzyme (UBC), actin (ACT),β-tubulin (TUB), elongation factors 2 (EF2), and glyceraldehyde-3-phos-phate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) examined by the quantitative real-time PCR in samples corresponding to different strains, life-cycle stages and abiotic stress treatments. Their expression stabilities were assessed by the comparative cycle threshold (Ct) method and by two different software packages:geNorm and Norm-Finder. The most stable housekeeping gene is UBC and the least stable housekeeping is GADPH. Thus, it is proposed that the most appropriate internal control gene for expression analyses in P. haitanensis is UBC. The results pave the way for further gene expression analyses of different aspects of P. haitanensis biology including different strains, life-history stages and abiotic stress responses.