A microorganism utilizing rice hulls as a substrate for the production of carboxymethylcellulase (CMCase) was isolated from seawater and identified as Bacillus lincheniformis by analyses of its 16S rDNA sequences. The optimal carbon and nitrogen sources for production of CMCase were found to be rice hulls and ammonium nitrate. The optimal conditions for cell growth and the production of CMCase by B. lincheniformis LBH-52 were investigated using the response surface method (RSM). The analysis of variance (ANOVA) of results from central composite design (CCD) indicated that a highly significant factor ("probe>F" less than 0.0001) for cell growth was rice hulls, whereas those for production of CMCase were rice hulls and initial pH of the medium. The optimal conditions of rice hulls, ammonium nitrate, initial pH, and temperature for cell growth extracted by Design Expert Software were 48.7 g/l, 1.8 g/l, 6.6, and 35.7$^{circ}C$, respectively, whereas those for the production of CMCase were 43.2 g/l, 1.1 g/l, 6.8, and 35.7$^{circ}C$. The maximal production of CMCase by B. lincheniformis LBH-52 from rice hulls under optimized conditions was 79.6 U/ml in a 7 l bioreactor. In this study, rice hulls and ammonium nitrate were developed to be substrates for the production of CMCase by a newly isolated marine microorganism, and the time for production of CMCase was reduced to 3 days using a bacterial strain with submerged fermentation.