Marinospirillum perlucidum sp. nov., a novel helical bacterium isolated from a sea cucumber culture pond. Strain F3212T, Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, helical and motile bacterium, was isolated from the marine sediment collected in a sea cucumber culture pond located in Rongcheng, China. Strain F3212T grew optimally at pH 8.5, at 30 °C and in the presence of 3.0 % (w/v) NaCl. Phylogenetic analysis, based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, indicated that strain F3212T belongs to the genus Marinospirillum, clustering with M. celere, M. alkaliphilum, M. minutulum, M. megaterium and M. insulare (with 96.4, 94.6, 93.1, 92.4 and 92.1 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities, respectively). The chemotaxonomic properties of strain F3212T were similar to those of members of the genus Marinospirillum. Q-8 was the sole respiratory ubiquinone and the genomic DNA G+C content was 53.3 mol%. The major fatty acids were C18 : 1ω9c, C16 : 0 and C18 : 0. The polar lipid pattern consisted of diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, an unidentifed lipid and an unidentified aminophospholipid. The average nucleotide identity scores for strains M. celere DSM 18438T and M. minutulum DSM 6287T were 74.5 and 69.4 %, respectively. The DNA-DNA homologies with M. celere DSM 18438T and M. minutulum DSM 6287T were less than 20 %. It''s concluded that strain F3212T represents a new species of the genus Marinospirillum, for which the name Marinospirillum perlucidum sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is F3212T (=KCTC 52892T=MCCC 1H00198T).