A system and method are provided for distributed acoustic sensing in a multicore optical fiber. The system includes a transmitter for simultaneously propagating a sequence of M light pulses through the multicore optical fiber using a spatial mode selected from a set of N spatial modes provided by a spatial mode selector for the transmitter that is coupled to an input to the multicore optical fiber, with M and N being respective integers greater than one. The system further includes a receiver for receiving the sequence of M light pulses at an output of the multicore optical fiber and detecting an environmental perturbation in the multicore optical fiber based on an evaluation of a propagation of the sequence of M light pulses through the multicore optical fiber.