I smell baloney. First, where did you get the idea that ultrasound would be used? I read nothing of the sort. So your statement that ultrasound only travels a few meters in water may be true, but has no bearing on the topic and certainly doesn't prove that anyone was wrong or that the technique would not work.
Second, you are apparently confused about the need for huge "resonant cavities". What resonant cavities? We are not talking about sizing antennae to detect EM radiation, but about simple propagation of pressure waves. Since there is no need to size antenna to be some multiple of the wavelength to detect sounds I see no technical reason the lenses could not be reaonably sized. After all, human ears can detect sound in the 30 to 20,000 Hz range without being meters across, so your insistence that huge impossible receivers would be needed makes no sense. The researchers' technique uses the differences in the speed of sound in various media to focus the sound. It does not "receive" the sound and then amplify it. So there is no need to size components to be multiples of wavelengths.