A novel Gram-stain-negative, rod-shaped, yellow-pigmented, non-sporulating, non-motile bacterium, designated strain AK20 T , was isolated from seawater collected from Kochi city, Kerala state, India. Colonies on marine agar were circular, yellow, shiny, translucent, 2-3 mm in diameter, convex and with entire margin. Flexirubin-type pigment was present. The fatty acids were dominated by iso-branched units with a high abundance of iso-C 15 : 0 , iso-C 15 : 1 G, iso-C 17 : 0 3-OH, summed feature 3 (C 16 : 1 v7c and/or iso-C 15 : 0 2-OH) and iso-C 15 : 0 3-OH. Polar lipids included phosphatidylethanolamine, two unidentified aminophospholipids, two unidentified phospholipids and four unidentified lipids. Menaquinone 6 (MK-6) was the predominant respiratory quinone. The DNA G+C content of strain AK20T was 38.8 mol%.Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that strain AK20 T was closely related to Formosa spongicola A2 T and Bizionia paragorgiae KMM 6029 T (pair-wise sequence similarities of 95.9 and 95.7 %, respectively), forming a distinct branch within the family Flavobacteriaceae and clustering with the clade comprising species of the genus Bizionia. Based on phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characteristics and phylogenetic analysis, strain AK20 T is different from the existing genera in the family Flavobacteriaceae, and is therefore considered to represent a novel species of a new genus, for which the name Xanthomarina gelatinilytica gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of Xanthomarina gelatinilytica is AK20 T (5MTCC 11705 T 5JCM 18821 T ).