An orange-coloured bacterium, designated as strain GRR-S3-23T, was isolated from a tidal flat sediment collected from Garorim Bay, Chuncheongbuk-do, Republic of Korea. Cells of GRR-S3-23T were aerobic, Gram-stain-negative, rod-shaped and motile. GRR-S3-23T grew at 18–40 °C (optimum, 30 °C), pH 7.0–9.0 (optimum, pH 7.0) and with 2–4 % NaCl (optimum, 2–3 % w/v). Results of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that GRR-S3-23T was closely related to
Tenacibaculum aiptasiae
a4T (97.6 %), followed by
Tenacibaculum aestuarii
SMK-4T (97.5 %),
Tenacibaculum mesophilum
MBIC 1140T (97.4 %),
Tenacibaculum singaporense
TLL-A2T (97.3 %),
Tenacibaculum crassostreae
JO-1T (97.2 %),and
Tenacibaculum sediminilitoris
YKTF-3T (97.1 %). The average amino acid identity values between GRR-S3-23T and the related strains were 86.8–72.8 %, the average nucleotide identity values were 83.3–74.1 %, and the digital DNA–DNA hybridization values were 27.0–19.6 %. GRR-S3-23T possessed menaquinone-6 (MK-6) as major respiratory quinone and had summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c, 20.6 %) and iso-C15 : 1G (10.8 %) as major fatty acids (>10.0 %). The polar lipid profiles of GRR-S3-23T contained phosphatidylethanolamine, one unidentified aminolipid, one unidentified aminophospholipid, three unidentified lipids, one unidentified glycolipid and four unidentified phospholipids. The DNA G+C content of GRR-S3-23T was 33.7%. On the basis of the results of the polyphasic analysis involving phylogenetic, phylogenomic, physiological and chemotaxonomic analyses described in this study, GRR-S3-23T is considered to represent a novel species within the genus
Tenacibaculum
, for which the name Tenacibaculum tangerinum is proposed. The type strain is GRR-S3-23T (=KCTC 102029T=KACC 23271T=JCM 36353T).