Other than the narration, I don't think there was a single thing I liked about this story. Which is interesting, because I said the same thing(minus the narration) when I read "Old Man and the Sea".
I thought the AI was incongruous and a blatant plot device. I mean, why put AI on a boat? What did that AI do, other than talk to the occupants? It seemed like Lolo had to put in the course, had to watch the radar, had to steer, etc. It was a tack-on at best, that was used to get the story to the endpoint that the writer was trying to reach.
I didn't like the use of gender-neutrality to escape rape. Rape has little to do with gender or sex, and much more to do with power. I think that Cat wanted a punch of shock in the story, and used the rape to this point.
I didn't like the characters. Lolo was one-dimensionally bitter, Nico was one-dimensionally high(I mean, what did he do in this story other than provide a connection to the mermaids?), and Jorge was so one-dimensionally evil, he should have been wearing a top hat and twirling his mustache. I don't consider the boat to be a character, because it was such a blatant tack-on plot device.
I didn't like the conflict. The big bads would really give up on them that easily? Why even have them in the story, that "conflict" could have been omitted completely, and absolutely nothing in the story would have changed. Zero. The mermaids were taking away their precious haul, and before Jorge went nuts, nobody really thought too much about it. And wouldn't they have lost some while dragging it under the water anyway? Why didn't Lolo have a weapon on board? I know NO boat captains that don't have some sort of weapon on board, be it a gun, knife, baseball bat, gaffing hook, etc. Surely, they would have a knife to cut tangled lines in a supposed fishing boat. Lolo could have also had the Magdalena report in the crime, as others have pointed out.
I didn't like the science. Again, the AI was useless, and really seemed to be the only tech in the story. Why/how would a dirt-poor fisherman who lived hand to mouth put a presumably expensive AI retrofit on his boat? Why was there no other tech in the story?(other than the buzzer boats) Why/how would a group set up a system that would allow for gender neutralization for 13 year olds? Surely there would be many hoops to jump through for this kind of charity.
I think Cat Rambo had a thought of connecting a story with Old Man and the Sea in one hand, and a rape/gender neutralization story/shock point in the other hand, and mashed them together and just formed something ugly.