 Detroit Seamount has a wide (100,000 square kilometers) base and rises from the bottom of the abyssal plain to a depth of approximately ; in fact, it is as wide as Hawaii island at the head of the chain.The width of the seamount, as well as the extremely gentle slope, which is very shallow even for a Hawaiian shield volcano, seem to show that the seamount suffered a catastrophic collapse sometime in its history; such a collapse is a relatively common event in the growth of Hawaiian volcanoes, caused when the volcanoes grow so fast that they destabilize.A sequence of sediments to thick compose the volcano, in several layers.