The female hake are partial spawner, laying eggs four or five times during a spawning season with rests in between.

[1] The principal spawning grounds are in the southern portion of its range in the canyons and rocky bottoms of the Bay of Biscay in the shelf break area.

The larvae are either deposited in the nursery areas of the Bay of Biscay or swept further out to sea, depending on the direction of the current.

The more larvae deposited in the nursery areas is highly correlated with successful recruitment of adult hake into the population.

After two months, the eggs hatch and the juvenile hake demonstrate a diel vertical migration, staying near the muddy bottoms during daylight hours and ascending to feed at shallower depths during the night.

The adults also prefer to rest near the bottom during the day but they do not ascend to as near the surface as the juveniles[1] Individual hake may be seen foraging alone near the seabed but higher in the water column they tend to feed in shoals.

[3] Small European hake up to 16 cm (6.3 in) long, those less than a year old, feed mostly on crustaceans such as krill, mysids and amphipods.

[5] In the north east Atlantic this species has been recorded feeding on blue whiting, horse mackerel and clupeids and it is regarded as an apex predator in this area.

At total lengths between 11 cm (4.3 in) and 15.9 cm (6.3 in) had a more varied diet with an increased utilisation of euphausiids but they also consumed an increased number of decapods, these were from a wide variety of species, such as Chlorotocus crassicornis, Alpheus glaber, Plesionika heterocarpus, Pasiphaea sivado, and Solenocera membranacea with fish and mysids being less important.

Once a length of 36 cm (14 in) was attained the fish had shifted to an entirely piscivorous diet and the favoured prey changed to centracanthids such as Spicara flexuosa and Centracanthus cirrus with the importance of clupeids declining at the same time.

[9] In the Atlantic off the Portuguese coasts a study found that hake were opportunistic feeders and preferred the demersal fish species that were most abundant at any given time with the main prey blue whiting, Atlantic mackerel, chub mackerel, European anchovy and pilchard.

The northern stock is thought to be being exploited within its safe biological limits and to have an increasing population, although in 2011 the total allowable catch was exceeded by up to 30%.

[15] For example, in the Gulf of Lions hake constituted an important fraction of commercial landings but the stock has been overexploited so that only juveniles and young adults occur on the continental shelf following decades of intensive bottom trawling.

M. merluccius has been assessed on some Regional red Lists and the population in the Mediterranean is classed a Vulnerable, in the Baltic as Near Threatened and that in the Eastern Central Atlantic as Least Concern.

[1] European hake is mainly sold in its fresh form, but it may also be frozen, dried, salted and canned.

The meat can be matched with strong flavours and hake is often cooked with tomatoes, garlic, chorizo and paprika.