Along with 90 others on a rickety fishing vessel bound for Spain, Moustapha Diouf watched as ten of them died one by one from heat and exhaustion.

Concerned about the health risks posed by the corpses, Mr. Diouf had to throw the bodies overboard. Five were friends.

In that macabre moment 17 years ago, Mr. Diouf said, he vowed to do everything in his power to stop others from making the choice he had and suffering the same fate: he would make it his mission to dissuade his Senegalese compatriots from attempting to reach Europe and drowning or dying in countless other ways on the dangerous journey.

“If we do nothing, we will become complicit in their deaths,” said 54-year-old Mr. Diouf, sitting in a dusty office at the nonprofit he co-founded that was empty except for a desk and a few chairs. “I will fight every day to ensure that young people don’t leave.”

In 2006, the boat that Mr. Diouf boarded with his friends was one of the first of many pirogues, as the boats are called, that set out that year from Senegal’s coastal villages toward the Canary Islands, a 60-mile-long Spanish archipelago off the Moroccan coast.

With their traditional way of fishing, they are no match for the industrial trawlers from China, Europe and Russia that had begun to scour the sea around them, Mr. Diouf and his fellow villagers could no longer feed their families. They believed migration was their best choice.

In just one year, almost 32,000 migrants, most of them West Africans, reached the Canary Islands via this irregular route.

Thousands of others died or disappeared. The route was so treacherous that the motto of those who braved it was “Barsa wala Barsakh,” which means “Barcelona or die” in Wolof, one of Senegal’s national languages. Still, it was so popular that locals began calling places like Thiaroye-sur-Mer, Mr. Diouf’s village in a Dakar suburb, “international airports.”

Mr. Diouf was one of the lucky ones: he made it to the Canary Islands alive. But the whole experience was terrible, he said. He was imprisoned and deported to Senegal. After his return, he founded his non-profit organization, known as, along with two other returnees AJRAP, or the Association of Young Repatriates, whose mission is to encourage Senegalese youth to stay.

In his search, Mr. Diouf enlisted the help of some prominent allies: He wrote a letter to the country’s president, Macky Sall, but never received a response. He met with the mayor of the capital, Dakar. He even tried to travel to Brussels to speak to European Union authorities but was denied a visa.

But that didn’t stop him.

If funds are available, AJRAP organizes vocational training in baking, poultry farming, electricity and entrepreneurship to provide alternatives to pirogue travel. Mr Diouf is also speaking to young people in local schools to correct the overly rosy picture of Europe often painted by those who have made it there.

But he is painfully aware of his limitations. He is unable to offer anyone a job and most of them choose to migrate anyway.

“We know that the European Union sent money to Senegal to create jobs,“ he said with a quiet resignation in his voice. “But we haven’t seen any of that money.”

After the initial peak in 2006–2007, the number of people attempting to cross the Atlantic declined in subsequent years. But recently the route has seen a resurgence in popularity, particularly among young people struggling to find work and fishermen affected by their dwindling catches.

According to Spanish authorities, more than 35,000 migrants have arrived in the Canary Islands so far this year, surpassing the 2006 peak. Most of them came from West Africa.

Communities like Thiaroye-sur-Mer, where fishing is the traditional livelihood, have been the most decimated and harmed by emigration. According to Mr. Diouf’s nonprofit organization, 358 villagers have died en route to Europe since 2006. There have been years when local soccer tournaments had to be canceled because there weren’t enough players.

Last month, President Sall announced “emergency measures” to “neutralize the exodus of migrants.”

Mr. Diouf said the government had not offered support to the young people in his village and that measures promised by Mr. Sall had not yet been implemented.

Aly Deme, 47, a fellow fisherman who traveled to Spain on the same ill-fated boat in 2006, said Mr Diouf was “doing the government’s job”.

“He doesn’t have the resources,” he said. “But he has the courage.”

Standing on the beach at Thiaroye-sur-Mer, surrounded by abandoned pirogues and nets whose owners had left for Europe, Mr. Diouf pointed to low-rise buildings that were largely unfinished due to a lack of money.

“In all of these houses, at least one person left,” he said. “And in most families, someone died.”

He pulled out his phone and played a video posted on TikTok showing a group of enthusiastic young people reaching a rocky shore in a wooden boat.

These were people he knew from his work with his nonprofit, and while the video was a sign that they had reached Europe alive, for Mr. Diouf the news was bittersweet.

“I taught her to bake pastries,” he said, pointing to a smiling young woman wearing a colorful headscarf. “And the two guys next to her, in electricity.”

But they couldn’t find work in Senegal.

Mr. Diouf is a tall man with an impressive presence and almost gruff demeanor. He has suffered many losses in his life, but usually holds back from expressing his feelings.

His older brother died when his pirogue was sunk by a large fishing vessel, Mr. Diouf said matter-of-factly, and his first wife left him and their three children because she was dissatisfied with the attention he devoted to his mission.

But when he spoke last month of a shipwreck in which the sea claimed the lives of 15 people from the same local family in his village, his voice failed him.

“Psychologically, I just can’t take it,” he said, his eyes watering. But then he collected himself. “If I prevent at least one person from dying in the sea, it will be worth it.”

The task is enormous: 75 percent of Senegalese are under 35 years old, and young adults face enormous social pressure to make money and support their families. However, this is becoming increasingly difficult: inflation reached almost 10 percent last year, largely due to a rise in food prices.

Atou Samb, a 29-year-old fisherman, has tried to get to Europe three times and said once he raised enough money he would try again.

“We respect Moustapha a lot in the village,” Mr Samb said as he repaired a fishing net in the scorching sun. “He never stops talking about the dangers of migration. But words alone won’t feed my family. There’s nothing left for us here.”

On a recent morning, Mr. Diouf spoke to a class of 13-year-olds at a local school. Almost everyone said that someone in their family had left for Spain.

“If your boat is lost, you will all die,” Mr. Diouf said in his blunt way. “I know you all want to help your parents. But the best way to help them is to stay alive.”

The class nodded dutifully. But when asked who wanted to stay in Senegal after school, only six out of 101 raised their hands.

Lately, even Mr. Diouf has found it increasingly difficult to believe his own words.

“How can I keep telling them to stay when there are no jobs?” he said. “How can I keep telling them not to go on the pirogue and apply for a visa when my own visa application was rejected?”

Perhaps the most difficult task of all is convincing your own children to stay.

Ousseynou, Mr. Diouf’s eldest, is 18 and tries to make a living from fishing.

“I went to the sea today and didn’t find anything,” he said as he stood at the door of their home where he lives with 14 family members. “The whole week was like that.”

“I’ll be leaving soon,” he said.