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That “helped eliminate some hypotheses about its formation,” says marine geophysicist Gail Christeson, who is a program director for marine geology and geophysics at the National Science Foundation.

For his research about the habitats of forage fish, the marine geology professor had won passage in Cyclops 1, the Everett-based OceanGate’s predecessor to Titan, which caught the world’s attention last week when it vanished and apparently imploded.

“Technically speaking, I think it’s amazing,” said Marco Tedesco, a professor of marine geology at Columbia University who was not involved in the research.

“A person buying an electric vehicle is probably not that aware of the fact that children are mining for their batteries in the D.R.C.,” said Bramley Murton, a marine geology professor at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England.

The team found a lack of ocean sediment covering the lava, as well as a curious lack of animals such as starfish, which usually colonize the hard surfaces of seamounts quickly, they report in Marine Geology.