Among microalgae, the marine diatom Haslea ostrearia has the distinctive feature of synthesizing and releasing, into the surrounding environment, a blue-green polyphenolic pigment called marennine. The oyster-breeding industry commonly makes use of this natural phenomenon for the greening of oysters grown in the ponds of the French Atlantic coast. This article reports the in vitro antioxidant properties of pure marennine. Two kinds of evaluation systems were adopted to test the antioxidative activity of marennine: antioxidant capacity assays (β-carotene and thymidine protection assays and iron reducing power assay) and free radical scavenging assays (DPPH·, O2·-, and HO·). In almost all cases, marennine exhibited significantly higher antioxidative and free radical scavenging activities than natural and synthetic antioxidants commonly used in food, as shown by comparing median effective concn. (EC50) values, for each test independently. This medium mol. wt. polyphenol (around 10 kDa) from microalgae is thus a potentially useful natural antioxidant. Because of its blue-coloring property and water soly., it could also be used as a natural food-coloring additive. [on SciFinder(R)]