A Gram-positive, motile, short-rod-shaped bacterium, designated strain JLT1488(T), was isolated from the South China Sea and investigated in a taxonomic study using a polyphasic approach. The peptidoglycan type determined for strain JLT1488(T) was A4α with lysine as the diagnostic cell-wall diamino acid and an interpeptide bridge of L-Lys-L-Glu. The polar lipids consisted of diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylinositol mannosides, an unknown glycolipid and an unknown phospholipid. The only detected menaquinone was MK-8(H(4)), and the major fatty acids were summed feature 8 (C(18 : 1)ω7c/C(18 : 1)ω6c) , C(16 : 0) and summed feature 3 (C(16 : 1)ω7c/C(16 : 1)ω6c); significant amounts of C(12 : 0) 3-OH, C(10 : 0) and C(19 : 0) cyclo ω8c were also present. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 62.3 mol%. Comparison of the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain JLT1488(T) with those of related type strains demonstrated that it represented a novel lineage within the family Bogoriellaceae, suborder Micrococcineae, being closely related to species of the genera Georgenia, Bogoriella and Cellulomonas (94.6-96.8 % sequence similarity). These results demonstrate that strain JLT1488(T) is a member of a new genus, for which the name Oceanitalea nanhaiensis gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of the type species is JLT1488(T) ( = JCM 17755(T) = CGMCC 1.10826(T)).