A Gram-negative, oxidase-positive, facultatively anaerobic bacterium, designated strain E20121, was isolated from the digestive tract of a Japanese prawn (Marsupenaeus japonicus) collected from the coastal sea water area of Zhuhai, Guangdong province, China. The new isolate was determined to be closely related to Vibrio ponticus DSM 16217(T), having 97.6 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. Phylogenetic analysis based on recA, pyrH and rpoA also showed low levels of sequence similarities (72.6-96.6 %) with all species of the genus Vibrio. A multigene phylogenetic tree using concatenated sequences of the four genes (16S rRNA, rpoA, recA and pyrH) clearly showed that the new isolate is different from the currently known Vibrio species. DNA-DNA hybridization experiments revealed similarity values below 70 % with the closest related species V. ponticus DSM 16217(T). Several phenotypic traits enabled the differentiation of strain E20121 from the closest phylogenetic neighbours. The DNA G+C content of strain E20121 was determined to be 47.6 mol % and the major fatty acid components identified were C16:1ω7c and/or C16:1ω6c (39.8 %), C18:1ω7c (13.6 %) and C16:0 (9.6 %). Based on genotypic, phenotypic, chemotaxonomic, phylogenetic and DNA-DNA hybridization analyses, strain E20121 is proposed to represent a novel species of the genus Vibrio for which the name Vibrio zhuhaiensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is E20121(T)(=DSM 25602(T) = CCTCC AB 2011174(T)).