A novel Gram-stain-negative, horseshoe-shaped, non-motile bacterium, designated strain M12-11BT, was isolated from a marine sediment sample collected at a depth of 200 m from Kongsfjorden, Svalbard. The colony colour was orangish red due to the presence of carotenoids. Fatty acids were dominated by branched and unsaturated fatty acids (90.8 %), with a high abundance of iso-C15 : 0 (14.9 %), anteiso-C15 : 0 (11.4 %), iso-C15 : 1 G (13.1 %), C15 : 1ω6c (5.4 %), C17 : 1ω6c (6.7 %), summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c; 9.3 %) and summed feature 9 (10-methyl C16 : 0 and/or iso-C17 : 1ω9c; 5.9 %). Strain M12-11BT contained MK-7 as the major respiratory quinone. The polar lipids consisted of phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, one unidentified aminolipid and three unidentified lipids. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities, the type strains of
Cyclobacterium amurskyense
,
Cyclobacterium marinum
and
Cyclobacterium lianum
were most closely related to M12-11BT with sequence similarities of 98.2, 96.8 and 93.3 %, respectively. Other members of the family
Cyclobacteriaceae
had sequence similarities of <92.0 %. However, DNA–DNA hybridization with
Cyclobacterium amurskyense
KCTC 12363T and
Cyclobacterium marinum
DSM 745T showed relatedness values of only 24.5 and 32.5 % with respect to strain M12-11BT. Based on the results of DNA–DNA hybridization experiments and phenotypic and chemotaxonomic data, it appears that strain M12-11BT represents a novel species of the genus
Cyclobacterium
, for which the name Cyclobacterium qasimii sp. nov. is proposed; the type strain is M12-11BT ( = KCTC 23011T = NBRC 106168T) and it has a DNA G+C content of 40.5 mol%.