There is evidence of submarine landslides and active faults which constitute a tsunami hazard; the 1755 Lisbon earthquake may have occurred north of the seamount.

An expedition by the CS Dacia laying a deep sea cable between the Canary Islands and Cadiz discovered the seamount on October 12, 1883.

They rise between abyssal plains from a seafloor at 4,000–4,800 metres (13,100–15,700 ft) to depths of usually a few hundred meters below sea level.

Outcropping rocks are weathered and often altered by biological activity: sediments occur mainly in depressions[13] and are largely absent on the upper part of the seamount.

[15] Antiforms, gullies and scarps occur on the seamount, the latter are evidence of past submarine landslides or mass wasting phenomena.

[12] The plate motion history of the region is complicated and some seamounts formed off-track through pulsations of the mantle plume or through lithospheric anomalies.

[16] Buckling of the crust due to plate convergence is also responsible for the uplift of Coral Patch Seamount[17] and has pushed it over the Horseshoes Abyssal Plain.

[23] In addition, the most common hypotheses for the source of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake localize it in the area between Coral Patch Seamount and Gorringe Bank.

Outcropping rocks permit the settlement of species that would not find suitable substrates on sediment covered seafloor.

[25] Mobile animals include annelid serpulids, the crab Mediterranean geryon, the fish Atlantic wreckfish, blackbellied angler, rattails and silver roughy, gastropods and shrimps.

Underwater observations have found numerous fishing lines and other debris from human activity on Coral Patch Seamount.

[34] This evidence may yield cues about the identification of past life on Mars, as the basaltic rocks could be a suitable environment.