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. Some papers refer to only the shallowest part of the volcano as Detroit Seamount, and the rest of the seamount as the "Detroit Rise". The tallest volcanic cones of the seamount peak to above the rest of the seamount.
