The decomposition process starts after death and can proceed in the water column as the gelatinous organisms are sinking. Decay happens faster in the tropics than in temperate and subpolar waters as a result of warmer temperatures. In the tropics, a jelly-fall may take less than 2 days to decay in warmer, surface water, but as many as 25 days when it is lower than 1000 m deep. However, lone gelatinous organisms may spend less time on the sea floor as one study found that jellies could be decomposed by scavengers in the Norwegian deep sea in under two and a half hours.
Decomposition of jelly-falls is largely aided by these kinds of scavengers. In general, echinoderms, such as sea stars, have emerged as the primary consumer of jelly-falls, followed by crustaceans and fish. However, which scavengers find their way to jelly-falls is highly reliant on each ecosystem. For example, in an experiment in the Norwegian deep sea, hagfish were the first scavengers to find the traps of decaying jellies, followed by squat lobsters, and finally decapod shrimp. Photographs taken off the coast of Norway on natural jelly-falls also revealed caridean shrimp feeding on jelly carcasses.
With increased populations and blooms becoming more common, with favorable conditions and a lack of other filter feeders in the area to consume plankton, environments with jellies present will have carbon pumps be more primarily supplied with jelly-falls. This could lead to issues of habitats with established biological pumps succumbing to nonequilibrium as the presence of jellies would change the food web as well as changes to the amount of carbon deposited into the sediment. 
Finally, decomposition is aided by the microbial community. In a case study on the Black Sea, the number of bacteria increased in the presence of jelly-falls, and the bacteria were shown to preferentially use nitrogen released from decaying jelly carcasses while mostly leaving carbon. In a study conducted by Andrew Sweetman in 2016, it was discovered using core samples of the sediment in Norwegian fjords, the presence of jelly-falls significantly impacted the biochemical process of these benthic communities. Bacteria consume jelly carcasses rapidly, removing opportunities of acquiring sustenance for bottoming feeding macrofauna, which has impacts traveling up the trophic levels. In addition, with the exclusion of scavengers, jelly-falls develop a white layer of bacteria over the decaying carcasses and emit a black residue over the surrounding area, which is from sulfide. This high level of microbial activity requires a lot of oxygen, which can lead zones around jelly-falls to become hypoxic and inhospitable to larger scavengers.