The HPLC–PDA-MS/MS chemical analysis and dereplication efforts for the crude extract of S. artemisiae MCCB 248 suggested some key molecular features associated with the major components of this mixture. The MS and MS/MS spectra of the major four metabolites in the extract showed repeated losses of 18 mass units, which is typical of polyols that show neutral ion losses of water. Furthermore, the UV–Vis spectrum associated with these compounds was suggestive of a tetraene moiety in each, due to the typical absorption band from 280 to 340 nm with a clear maxima at 312 nm (Supplementary material). Taken together, these data suggest the presence of tetraene polyols in the extract, which would be in-line with the production of PKS or hybrid PKS natural products by similar actinomycetes such as the novonestmycins, separacenes, bahamaolides and marinisporolides (Kwon et al. 2009; Kim et al. 2012; Bae et al. 2013; Wan et al. 2015). However, the parent masses observed in this study were not found to correlate with any known molecules of this class in the MarinLit or Dictionary of Natural Products databases. Additionally, the molecular networking performed using GNPS failed to yield any matches against spectra present in the available MS/MS library databases for the four major metabolites present in the extract, but did suggest that these compounds could be analogs of the reported polyhydroxy macrolide natural product known as bastimolide A (Shao et al. 2015). On the other hand, of the lower abundance molecules in the extract, it was possible to identify several known diketopiperazines.