Hoyo Negro today is what it was when the divers found it in 2007 — a massive, roughly circular chamber at the bottom of a flooded cave system, accessible only to trained deep cave divers willing to make a long and technically demanding penetration dive to reach it.

The bones of Naia remain where they came to rest over the centuries of her lying on the chamber floor — the research team did not remove the skeleton in the way that terrestrial archaeological excavations typically remove human remains.

The decision to leave the skeleton in place was made partly for preservation reasons — the bones, while preserved by the cave water, were fragile, and removing them risked damaging them beyond the point where further study would be possible.

It was also made partly in recognition that the site was, in some sense, already the final resting place of the individual, and that disturbing that resting place more than was necessary for scientific documentation was not clearly justified.