Dongsha Atoll is located in the warm waters of the continental shelf in the north part of the South China Sea. It consists of an immense coral formation approximately 25 kilometers in diameter. In 2017, the Marine National Park Headquarters commissioned Taiwan Ocean Research Institute to send teams to explore the possible formation process of Dongsha Atoll, using ocean-bottom seismometers and sub-bottom profilers to examine the structure of the island's lower stratum.

The research conducted utilized the teleseismic P-wave receiver function method to observe reflected wave and converted wave arrival times relating to the Mohorovičić discontinuity, estimating the depth of the Mohorovičić discontinuity beneath the Dongsha Observation Station to be approximately 9 kilometers. These findings are consistent with the research of Wei et al. (2011), whose seismometer array on the west side of the Dongsha Atoll (OBS2006-3) obtained readings of 6.9km/s for the high-speed layer of the lower crust in the area where Dongsha Atoll stands. From this, it can be inferred that the Dongsha Atoll was formed on a body of intruding igneous rock and not a volcanic stratum developed from the bottom up.