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A bacterial strain was isolated from an oil-contaminated site and on its' further characterization, exhibited the potential of synthesising metabolites and the ability to degrade crude oil. Its' morphological, biochemical and 16S rRNA analysis suggested that the bacterium belongs to Dietzia maris AURCCBT01. This strain rapidly grew in the medium supplemented with n- alkanes C14, C18, C20, C28 and C32 utilizing them as a sole carbon source and produced a maximum canthaxanthin pigment of 971.37 µg/L in the n- C14 supplemented medium and produced the lowest pigment yield of 389.48 µg/L in the n- C-32 supplemented medium. Moreover, the strain effectively degraded 91.87% of crude oil in 7 days. The emulsification activity of the strain was 25% with the highest cell surface hydrophobicity (70.26%) and it showed a decrease in surface tension, indicating that the biosurfactant production lowers the surface tension. This is the first report on the characterization of the strain, Dietzia maris AURCCBT01 and its' novelty of alkane degradation and simultaneous production of canthaxanthin pigment., Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-021-02807-7., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestAuthors declare that there is no conflict of interest., (© King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology 2021.)