A marine bacterial strain, F72T, was isolated from a solitary scleractinian coral, collected in Yap seamounts in the Pacific Ocean. Strain F72T is a Gram-negative, light-yellow-pigmented, motile, rod-shaped bacterium. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain F72T is related to the genus Novosphingobium and has high 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities with the type strains of Novosphingobium pentaromativorans US6-1T (97.7 %), Novosphingobium panipatense SM16T (97.6 %), Novosphingobium mathurense SM117T (97.2 %) and Novosphingobium barchaimii LL02T (97.1 %). Ubiquinone Q-10 was detected as the dominant quinone. The predominant cellular fatty acids were C18:1ω7c and C17:1ω6c. The genomic DNA G+C content of strain F72T was 63.4 mol %. The polar lipids profile contained phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylmethylethanolamine, phosphatidylcholine, sphingoglycolipid and one uncharacterized lipid. Strain F72T shared DNA relatedness of 25 % with N. pentaromativorans JCM 12182T, 31 % with N. panipatense DSM 22890T, 21 % with N. mathurense DSM 23374T and 26 % with N. barchaimii DSM 25411T. Combined data from phenotypic, phylogenetic and DNA–DNA relatedness studies demonstrated that the strain F72T is a representative of a novel species of the genus Novosphingobium, for which we propose the name Novosphingobium profundi sp. nov. (type strain F72T = KACC 18566T = CGMCC 1.15390T).