California

The organisms found breathing H2S-laden water are very highly adapted for that -- either anaerobic, or symbiotic with anaerobics.

Journos appear to be thinking of brine pools, which are a very different phenomenon, not necessarily all that alkaline, just hypersaline and anoxic. These had been much in the news in CA, and certainly familiar at Scripps, a few years back.

Still, very bad writing (and fact-checking, which fails even at looking up definitions) for a public-facing source . It's not like there weren't any experts nearby to check with. Probably the Scripps researchers cringed when they saw what journos did with their info.