 By day, it lives close to the bottom on the continental shelf and upper slope at depths not usually exceeding ; 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.It is an important commercial fish species in southern Africa.Very similar to "Merluccius merluccius" (European hake) and "Merluccius paradoxus" (the deep-water Cape hake), "M. capensis" has an average length around 50 cm, up to a maximum around .