A rod-shaped, Gram-negative, non-motile, aerobic and non-endospore forming bacterium, designated strain DD-13T, was isolated from the mangrove ecosystem of Goa, India. Strain DD-13T degraded polysaccharides such as agar, alginate, chitin, cellulose, laminarin, pectin, pullulan, starch, carrageenan, xylan and b-glucan. The optimum pH and temperature for growth was 7 and 36 6C, respectively. The strain grew optimally in the presence of 3%NaCl (w/v). The DNA G+C content was 61.4 mol%. The predominant fatty acid of strain DD-13T was iso-C15 : 0. Ubiquinone-8 was detected as the major respiratory lipoquinone. Phylogenetic studies based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis demonstrated that strain DD-13T formed a coherent cluster with species of the genus Microbulbifer. Strain DD-13T exhibited 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity levels of 98.9–97.1%with Microbulbifer hydrolyticus IRE-31T, Microbulbifer salipaludis JCM 11542T, Microbulbifer agarilyticus JAMB A3T, Microbulbifer celer KCTC 12973T and Microbulbifer elongatus DSM 6810T. However, the level of DNA–DNA relatedness between strain DD-13T and the five type strains of these species of the genus Microbulbifer were in the range of 26–33 %. Additionally, strain DD-13T demonstrates several phenotypic differences from these type strains of species of the genus Microbulbifer. Thus strain DD- 13T represents a novel species of the genus Microbulbifer, forwhich the name Microbulbifer mangrovi sp. nov. is proposed with the type strain DD-13T (5KCTC 23483T5JCM 17729T).