"We expect to load out the fabricated containment chamber tomorrow and we hope to have the system up and operating within a week," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told reporters.

The dome is the first of three designed to be placed "over the leak sources and allow us to collect the oil, funnel it up through pipework to a drill ship called Enterprise on the surface."

Weekend storms grounded aerial sorties of dispersants and prevented skimming vessels from mopping up the growing 130-mile (200 kilometer) by 70-mile (110 kilometer) slick, which could wreak huge economic and environmental damage on the fragile region.

But an army of more than 2,500 responders and some 200 boats took advantage of better forecasts Monday to lay out miles of protective booms, relaunch skimming vessels and train local fishermen for the cleanup effort.

"It's looking better," said Petty Officer Curtis Ainsley, the leader of a coast guard team surveying the widening slick and installing mobile protective boom stations on boats.

"If we can get the seas to lay down for us we can make a dent," Ainsley said. "As soon as we can get the vessels here and the booms laid down we can get started skimming."

An indeterminate amount of crude, estimated to be at least 210,000 gallons a day, has been streaming from the wellhead below the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank on April 22, two days after a massive explosion that killed 11 workers.

The spill, now thought to be running into the millions of gallons overall and covering an area the size of a small country, has sparked fears of an environmental catastrophe.

Louisiana boasts some 40 percent of US wetlands -- prime spawning waters for fish, shrimp and crabs and a major stop for migratory birds -- and cleaning up a maze of channels accessible only by boat would be all but impossible.

BP has been operating a fleet of robotic submarines in the murky depths for more than a week to try to activate the blowout preventer, a giant 450-tonne valve system that should have shut off the oil after the initial accident.

One has also been pumping dispersant directly into three leaks, but overflight data is needed before it is known if this is having a significant impact on the amount of oil reaching the surface.

On Sunday afternoon BP started operations on a relief well, penetrating the sea floor as it began drilling down to approximately 18,000 feet so that special fluids and then cement ultimately can be injected in to cap the oil.

With this process expected to take up to three months, immediate attention is focusing on giant containment structures that could be deployed as early as this weekend to cover the leaking pipe a mile down on the seabed.

Suttles admitted there would be "technical challenges" in trying to sink a 65-tonne structure down so deep, but said that despite the extreme pressure physics was to some extent in their favor.

"What allows this to work is the fact that oil is less dense than water and wants to float.

"Essentially an oil column exerts less pressure than a water column so that helps push the oil to the surface and we can assist that with other means."

Although President Barack Obama spoke Sunday during a visit to the region of a "potentially unprecedented environmental disaster," no impacts of oil on US shores have yet been confirmed.

There was no sign of oil Monday morning at the pilot station about two miles north of the Gulf of Mexico at the Southwest Pass, the main entrance to the Mississippi River for cargo ships and deep water vessels.

But two of the pilots who shepherd the ships up the river spotted what looked like an oiled gull. "This one looked dirty," Captain Michael Fitzpatrick told AFP.

The bird was fluttering its wings in the water beneath the station and then flew and landed about 30 yards on a rocky breakwater, where it anxiously preened itself.

"We keep holding our fingers, hoping we'll dodge the bullet," said Fitzpatrick. Seeing the bird puts "a sick feeling in your stomach. A real sick feeling.

"People like us who work around here, we respect the nature. We enjoy it. We love it. You never think it can all be taken away."

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