By day, it lives close to the bottom on the continental shelf and upper slope at depths not usually exceeding 400 m (1,300 ft); it makes a large, daily vertical migration rising at night to feed in the nectonic zone, and it also migrates southwards in spring and northwards in autumn.

The shallow-water Cape hake might be classified as a euryphagous carnivore; immature specimens feed on small, deep-sea fishes and crustaceans.

[5] The shallow-water Cape hake migrates vertically, daily, being demersal by day and nektonic by night.

The Cape hake is often fished together with the species Merluccius paradoxus, which generally lives at greater depths.

Most reported catches combine both species, but the range of M. capensis continues towards the north-west coast of southern Africa, in the region of Angola, where, for practical purposes, M. paradoxus does not occur.